When people use a digital product like a PC or a smartphone, they often do not realize that they actually have overcome a learning curve that might be extremely hard for someone else. This might sound unreal, because many people are dealing with digital products daily and are so used to the way it works, especially the younger generation. Do people still remember their first typing lesson in school, where they learned the QWERTY keyboard layout and saw the first typed sentence that appeared on a screen? Do people still remember their first mouse lesson, when they practiced how to navigate the cursor on the screen and tried to develop a mental model of how that physical mouse maps out on the screen real estate? They might forget that experience, because they learned that at a younger age, so it seemed to be a very smooth learning curve. This is why Winfred B. Hirschmann defines the learning curve as “an underlying natural characteristic of organized activity” (1964). However, a PC and a smartphone are not designed to be very inclusive to everyone because the learning curve is against human nature’s behavior.
Because humans are so good at learning, they start to walk and talk at a very young age. Learning is very essential in order to help humans develop physical and social abilities. For example, before having a computer at home, in the year 2000, a child would play with a neighbor the whole day long without any digital products. They would play a card game, puzzle game, or physical game with only verbal and body interaction. Because the required interaction and physical ability are very natural for those games, children develop them at a young age. So there is a minimal effort in terms of the learning curve. Those games are also very friendly and accessible to the elderly and some people with disabilities. However, because the design of the keyboard and mouse is not what we learned when we are at a young age, more like a skill that we need to develop when we grow up, it is a lot harder for the elderly and people with disabilities to develop those skills at a difficult stage of their lives.
In addition, although a Graphical User Interface only requires visual perception, there is still a lot to learn in order to perform certain tasks on it. This is also why in the US, a lot of libraries offer computer classes for people who need to develop these skills at a difficult stage of their lives. However, lots of other countries do not have the resources to have training available on that scale. Then what can be done with those people who are left out of the digital world?
The answer is to develop a user interface that works just like how people naturally interact with each other. For example, a machine can read aloud sign language and intuitively input back other people’s responses to the person who has a disability; a machine understands an elderly person’s voice command and helps him or her to perform certain simple tasks like replying to an email or reading a newspaper. A machine interprets a person’s talk and responds back with his or her native language when communicating with someone who speaks a different language. A lot of these technologies are being developed and improved, and they require a lot of advanced technology in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, speech recognition, motion translation, etc. However, that should be how the technology works for humans, in a very natural way, not forcing people to learn a new skill so that the machine can get the input command easily.
One day, PCs and smartphones will go away just like how phone lines are fading away. New technology will arrive, and be more inclusive and benefit more and more people.
REFERENCES
Hirschmann, W.B. (1964, January). “Profit from the Learning Curve.” Harvard Business
Review. https://hbr.org/1964/01/profit-from-the-learning-curve
