Doug Johnson

IDS: Intelligence Deficit Syndrome
Head for the Edge, November 2000

I like to think of myself as a person of at least average intelligence. But the more I use technology, the less sure of that I become. Let me give you an example.

Last winter I purchased my first cell phone. It worked fine in the telephone company office when I bought it. I took it home and it stopped working. I took it back to the telephone company and it worked fine. I took it home and it stopped working. So I did the logical thing and left it sitting on my desk for a couple of months.

But the second bill I received for services I wasn’t using made me mad enough to go back yet again to the telephone company where the 20-something young lady looked at it, dialed a number with it, and sat back rather smugly as the phone on her desk rang.

“Wait,” I said. “Give me that.” She handed it to me and I tried to dial. Nothing happened. “See!” I cried and handed it back to her, happily knowing it was my turn to be smug.

It didn’t last long. The lady actually stole one of my favorite lines and said, “Works better when you turn it on. Press this button first.”

“Look, I push that button till the cows come home. It still doesn’t work,” said I.

“Try holding it down for a two-count like the directions say,” said she. It worked and I left her office feeling dumber than dirt.

The experience exacerbated what I call my IDS – Intelligence Deficit Syndrome.

See if any of these “technologies” have given you IDS:

• Having to use over 20 numbers to make a long distance telephone call. The number string for me to dial out from a hotel using my credit card looks something like this: 9-1-800-228-8288-507-555-1234-863-037-7459-2468 I count thirty-six numbers I have to remember.
• Having a stove with burners set in a rectangular patter and knobs set in a row. I have to look at the little diagram beside the knob every time I light a burner.
• Having one car with the wiper lever on the left side of the column and one car with the wiper level on the right side of the column. I wipe when I want to dim, and I still haven’t quite got the wash to work on a consistent basis.
• Pushing a glass door when you should have pulled on the door.
• Scorching yourself because you don’t know if counterclockwise makes the water in the shower hotter or colder. This is a common vacation trauma for me.
• Knowing what fewer than 50% of the buttons do on the VCR’s remote control. And I never remember how to get out of the on-screen menu. At least my deck doesn’t blink 12:00, although I haven’t changed the time to accommodate for daylight savings time. Let’s see, is that fall back or fall forward. Damn!
• Worrying that dragging the little disk icon on your Mac to the trashcan icon will erase the files on the disk. For some users I’ve made an alias of the trash icon and gave it a symbol that looks like an arrow. Eases the fear.

With the possible exception of a few 8-18 year-olds, most of us at some time suffer from IDS.

Donald Norman in his wonderful book The Design of Everyday Things (Doubleday, 1990) argues that engineers often don’t create user-friendly technologies. Non-intuitive operations (glass doors), counter-intuitive controls (trashcan icons), overly-complex devices (VCR remotes), or lack of consistency between devices (wiper controls), all can and should be reengineered with a little more human psychology in mind. It’s not the lack of intelligence or ability on the part of the user, but poor design that leads to frustration when using technology.

So what does this have to do with me as a school media specialist, you’re asking? Like many media specialists, I do not have a technology background. My small competencies are in the areas of the humanities, writing, and education. I suspect many in our field share this history. But I believe that very lack of technology background makes us especially sensitive to the struggles of students and teachers who are experiencing problems using complex technologies. We have a certain empathy that most technology “experts” simply do not.

Several of the excellent media specialists in our district have capitalized on their ability to empathize. When analyzing whether the problem is “on the desk or in the chair,” these folks automatically assume the problem is on the desk - with the technology. Even if it seems like a user error, they know that it is only poor design that keeps an otherwise bright and capable person from intuiting the proper operation. You never hear them say things like:

• No, the other right arrow.
• I’ve seen third graders who can do that. Why can’t you?
• It works better when you turn it on.

Good teachers have always known the difference between ignorance (a perfectly respectable, correctable state) and stupidity (a regrettable condition for which a cure is unlikely). An empathetic approach recognizes the difference and allows the learner to learn without feeling stupid. And that is important for both kids and adults.

Now if I can just master how to store numbers in this darn phone…