If you’re used to a computer, you may find this a bit disconcerting. But you’re dealing with a magical machine, and simply by knowing how to use it, you’re a magician.

Take a look at your keyboard for a second.

Let’s see what’s on the keyboard. A number pad and a keyboard with the keys in a strange, non-alphabetical order. So far, this remotely resembles a typewriter, as long . But what does a key marked “F5″ do? Is it like a car radio preset? Why do most computers have twelve stations?

We haven’t even turned on the computer yet. Average Joe user opens up Internet Explorer and finds something worthwhile online. They go into Word to type something out about it, and suddenly, Internet Explorer has disappeared! Where did it go? Our user goes back into IE, which is, of course, in the start menu like it was before. He notices that IE is back at the home page–oh well, a minor inconvenience.

If this sounds like a stupid example to you because you know everything’s still in the taskbar, you’re not alone. The taskbar is a idiom, and a simple one for common Windows users. The problem is that Windows, Macs, and *nixes are filled with idioms. How many people learn the clipboard without someone telling them? Alt-tab? Right-clicking for a context menu? That the taskbar lists open windows? F5? The file system?
It’s Just the Beginning

That being said, idioms aren’t really a serious problem. If you have a hundred or so, they start to get really bad. But as surprising as it may seem, knowing incantations that don’t work anywhere but in the computer world isn’t the most magical part about it.

While a lot of the underlying workings of the computer are well disguised by Windows and other OSes, they’re still a long way away from making computers anything close to manageable for the uninitiated. The path to using a computer is littered with complications; while working on the next generation of spam filtering, we forgot that everyone still has to know what POP and IMAP servers are just to use most mail programs. An idiom is at least designed to become intuitive; nothing about mail services becomes particularly familiar with reuse. You just have to learn it all at once, servers and all.
It’s partly because of that mysterious magic that is only understood by a few that things like this thrive. Spyware, after all, installs itself; it’s one of the few types of product where the makers understand the importance of avoiding the unnecessarily complicated.

The programmers are losing to the marketers on this one. We build significant and powerful tools–free office suites, music standards without DRM, photo manipulation programs and give them away free–and they don’t get around as much as your average copy of Claria’s software ([1], [2]). We built a world out of magical tools–file systems, user interface idioms, and arcane terminology–and it’s no surprise that, with the job of simplification half done, users are forced either to stay ignorant or learn it all.

This isn’t a matter of making pretty user interfaces–it’s a fundamental design question of making computers that are not just easy to use, but easy to understand. If legitimate designers don’t work to answer this question, intelligent people without the proper “credentials” will be ignorant when faced with dangers coming from their computer–from adware to DRM to basic security and privacy issues.

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