I was nodding along to Nicholas’ response to an article about Gen Z and technology, and how it’s apparently ridiculous that they cannot use a printer. None of that should be a surprise:
I have been around cars all my life, and up until I was twenty years old, I probably got inside a car every day of the year. Do I know how to change oil on a car? Absolutely not. Should I know? Probably, but I never felt judged or mocked for not knowing.
And this is what is bothering me in this article. It mentions that “Gen Z” is feeling tech shame, and is being too shy to ask for help. The article should focus on older generations being terrible coworkers and not being able to understand what new employees need to learn or not.
As a designer it’s a constant frustration that some interfaces never improve, and that ‘tech illiteracy’ is used as an excuse to keep building bad hardware and software, it would be great if everything worked the way everyone expected it to, but it doesn’t. So we should also trust people to teach their colleagues things when they need help.