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Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction 11%–20% of the time, a new study from the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. The researchers behind the study therefore find that there are major gains to be achieved for society by rethinking the systems and involving users more in their development.
An endlessly rotating beach ball, a program that crashes without saving data or systems that require illogical procedures or simply do not work: Unfortunately, struggling with computers is still a familiar situation for most of us. Tearing your hair out over computers that do not work remains very common among users, according to new Danish research.
In fact, so much that on average, we waste 11%–20% of our time in front of our computers on systems that do not work or that are so difficult to understand that we cannot perform the task we want to. And this is far from being good enough, says Professor Kasper Hornbæk, one of the researchers behind the study.
"It's incredible that the figure is so high. However, most people experience frustration when using computers and can tell a horror story about an important PowerPoint presentation that was not saved or a system that crashed at a critical moment. Everyone knows that it is difficult to create IT systems that match people's needs, but the figure should be much lower, and one thing that it shows is that ordinary people aren't involved enough when the systems are developed," he says.
Professor Morten Hertzum, the other researcher behind the study, emphasizes that most frustrations are experienced in connection with the performance of completely ordinary tasks.
techxplore.com
An endlessly rotating beach ball, a program that crashes without saving data or systems that require illogical procedures or simply do not work: Unfortunately, struggling with computers is still a familiar situation for most of us. Tearing your hair out over computers that do not work remains very common among users, according to new Danish research.
In fact, so much that on average, we waste 11%–20% of our time in front of our computers on systems that do not work or that are so difficult to understand that we cannot perform the task we want to. And this is far from being good enough, says Professor Kasper Hornbæk, one of the researchers behind the study.
"It's incredible that the figure is so high. However, most people experience frustration when using computers and can tell a horror story about an important PowerPoint presentation that was not saved or a system that crashed at a critical moment. Everyone knows that it is difficult to create IT systems that match people's needs, but the figure should be much lower, and one thing that it shows is that ordinary people aren't involved enough when the systems are developed," he says.
Professor Morten Hertzum, the other researcher behind the study, emphasizes that most frustrations are experienced in connection with the performance of completely ordinary tasks.
We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction 11%–20% of the time, a new study from the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. The researchers behind the study therefore find that there are major gains to be achieved for society by...
