I like to think I am a pretty tolerant person when it comes to other people. I accept the fact that we are all human and have flaws and that I’m no different, and tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I can’t say the same thing about my relationship with technology. I am way more intolerant with technology than I am with people, and it is getting worse. Much worse.
Used to be that I was willing to take some of my own time to fix or work around a problem I was having with a piece of hardware or software I was trying to get to work. I spent hours building custom personal computers for people, tweaking this setting and downloading this driver and setting this or that pin on a motherboard. I even wired my parent’s home with ethernet drops so that we could have the internet on every floor.
I gave up hardware support years ago, though, because I grew intolerant of spending my own time to fix issues that I felt should have been fixed by the people who made the parts.
I’ve traveled the same path with software. I used to be completely accepting of restarting my computer every time a small patch came through. I was tolerant of the fact that my Word document wouldn’t open in your Word program because we didn’t have the same version. I learned how to use ipconfig and network management tools so that I could troubleshoot my internet connection if it was being weird. I saved my documents religiously just in case things crashed, and copied critical files on to cd just to be safe. Eventually, I could no longer tolerate these either, because I had found better operating systems, autosave, google apps, dropbox and the cloud.
I used to be ok spending a premium on software if I really needed it. Then I started using OpenOffice, Gimp, Mint, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Grooveshark, Turntable, and a host of other software. All free. All better than what I had been paying for. I can no longer tolerate spending money on software without trying it for free first.
I used to be ok with needing to be in the office to get some work done or in my living room with friends to enjoy playing games. Then I got a smartphone and a tablet and xbox live. Now if I can’t do it now, here, immediately, I have no tolerance for it.
These and a thousand other small but significant efficiencies in the way I interact with technology have honed my intolerance for ‘things not working’ to a very sharp point.
Don’t make me think.
I’d rather spend brain capital coming up with solutions to my own or my company’s problems, not trying to fix or outsmart the problems with your software or hardware. I will not hesitate, not even for a second, to move on if using your program or website or device isn’t immediately intuitive.
Don’t make them think.
There are 20 years’ worth of potential university students in this country who started their journey with technology later than me and likely from a place of less tolerance than I did. Many of them don’t have the perspective of what things were like ‘before,’ when people had to fight to get tech to work every step of the way. They have only ever had it all, and they are spoiled by the advancements in technology that have been made in their lifetimes. This will only become more and more pronounced as time goes on.
Every single year, the incoming freshman class at universities around the country will arrive on your front door less tolerant of bad or even average technology. They will not look at your university’s website on their mobile device if it isn’t mobile friendly, and in turn, will not look at your university at all. They will not want to buy 100 pounds of textbooks to lug around when they have been using e-readers for years. They’ll demand fast internet connections everywhere. They will not wait for you to tell them it is ok to make a video of why they love or hate your school. They will not use your clunky collaboration program for group work. They won’t tolerate archaic systems and formats and methods after growing up in a land of consumer technology that puts them at the center of their digital universe. They (or rather, their parents) certainly won’t tolerate paying a ton of tuition money to be forced to use technology that isn’t even as good as what they can use for free.
Higher education institutions need to become more intolerant of themselves and the technology they use (and how they use it) before their primary audience becomes completely intolerant of them.
Fran Zablocki 