This blog post crossed posted on the Tech Learning blog.
I’m always amazed at how excited people become when they find they don’t have to accept the default settings of a product. Default settings in many cases provide a starting point but they often become a hindrance as users become more sophisticated or desire to use take more control. I’m more amazed at how many people never even think they options.
Here are a few examples:
The default browser of every Windows computer is Internet Explorer. It works will for basic web surfing but as many know has some huge disadvantages when compared to a browser like FireFox which offers a far greater degree of customization. When people discover the power of extensions, they never go back to IE. Yet over half of all computer users stick with IE, mostly because either they don’t know another option exists, or they don’t see why they would switch. They are oblivious to any options or ideas that they can have more control over their experience.
Have you ever been in a meeting and someone opens up a laptop, logs on and everywhere in the room has to hear the Windows chime theme while the person scrambles to turn the volume down? How does that sound do anything to add to the experience of computing? They likely have no idea that you can disable that sound. They just live with it. Grant it, it’s a pretty minor issue but it’s also an easy fix.
Here’s a personal pet peeve. My wife on occasion gets to control the remote. When she does, she refuses to change the settings to “Subscribed Channels”. Instead she leaves it on the default setting of “All Channels” and scrolls through a bunch of channels we don’t get. I squirm impatiently in my chair and make a few comments but she refuses to change it. Maybe she just needs more practice. Unfortunately, that won’t happen. I realize in this case she’s doing it just to drive me nuts but I wonder how many others leave that setting as is and move through a number of channels they can’t watch anyway.
Last week I was working with a class of students who are all using SmartPhones and we talked about successes and frustrations in using their phones. It was evident that those most frustrated were the ones who failed to change many of the settings to meet their needs. Those who had understood how to customize the phone were much more satisfied users. They truly owned their phones. I told them to start thinking like hackers. I asked them to think of their devices in terms of what it should be able to do rather than only what it does. The hacking mentality strives to “own the devices” not let the device own them.
I hadn’t heard this story for a while but it made me think of the idea of default settings again,
A young woman was preparing a ham for a family dinner. She proceeded to cut the end off the ham prior to baking. Her husband asked why she did that, she said, “Mother always did and her ham was always very tasty”. The husband, thinking that seemed odd, went into the other room where his mother-in-law sat and asked her why she cut the end off the ham. She said her mother did and it was always very tasty. Trying to solve this mystery, the husband called the grandmother on the phone to find out once and for all why she cut the end off the ham. The grandmother answered, “My roaster was too small to fit the entire ham”.
The story has a number of variations but you get the idea. There’s a lot of things we do and have no idea why and never consider to ask if there’s a better way.
I’m sure you make a number of connections here to our schools and learning institutions. There are hundreds of default settings that we simply accept either because we don’t consider the alternatives or we think it’s too much to change. That may be a valid response in some cases but as I told the students with the SmartPhones, starting to think like a hacker opens up more opportunities for customization. When we continue to blindly accept the default settings without asking, “can we do better?” we fail to recognize our ability to customize. While I know this mantra may not work and be applicable in every situation it seems to me we CAN do better.
I leave you with this quote.
Now go turn off the Windows startup chime or buy a Mac.
We have the most personalisable technology ever conceived and yet, we don’t do it. And in schools, we in fact make sure that students can not learn it, by “locking things down” rather than allowing student profiles. By the way, the percentage of Mac users who have no idea how to change their settings matches that figure for PCs. I see it daily.
Ira Socols last blog post..Great Schools: 1. Changing Everything
Removed the startup/shutdown/login/logoff chimes, and I might even turn off some of my visual flourishes to try and up the computer’s performance a bit. Thanks for the great idea and post.
On XP, if anyone’s curious, it’s:
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices ->”Sounds” tab, then highlight the desired Program event near the bottom and change the “Sounds” box at the bottom to “none”.
Perhaps it is just that people aren’t taught to analyze adequately and because of this don’t consider the alternatives or even try them? Instead they just go through life taking everything at face value?
Re-technology. Don’t know what hope we have. I would say my technophobic hubby would have to (sadly) represent the skills level of 90 % of people in the population. He can’t even managed to work out how to put on my headset when watching videos on YouTube (hence wears them upside down and has broken them). Final grip is he doesn’t realise that touching another person computer is living life dangerously.
Sue Waterss last blog post..What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part II
I think that many people have a certain amount of fear associated with all that they don’t know and understand about technology. It’s easier to just use something as is than change something you don’t really know too much about and risk doing more damage in the process, or, make a change and not be able to figure out how to revert back to the original settings.
I’m glad I read this post/comments – just turned off the start-up chimes – thanks Dave!
Errins last blog post..Student Ownership at the Art Show Set-up
Excellent point here…
My initial connection here is the fact that when I sat down with the twenty teachers of my first “edtech cohort” last year, one of the first things we did was bust out the system preferences pane. This working group included folks who were anxious to learn about how rich technology can enhance teaching and learning, but they were not necessarily “tech savvy.” In fact, some had never worked from a laptop.
Therefore, I saw my first task as being one of helping them establish a connection first to the device. One of the main reasons I ordered the MacBook Pro is the customization of workflow it allows. I told them that the first day would feel sort of *nuts & bolts* -like and wouldn’t focus on learning theory or instruction, but that it would untimately help them in this quest. So once we learned how to open the thing up, and to see the differences between XP’s taskbar and the OSX finder… we cracked open the sys preferences pane and explored each icon for what it could do. We sped up the trackpad, allowed tap-to-click, customized the dock, the speech, the display, and perhaps most importantly, customized key shortcuts in expose’… I demonstrated simple things that I (and most teachers) do on a regular basis where these customized settings enhance my productivity, and extend what I can do.
I wanted them to leave that day with a machine that felt like it was their own… and slightly different from the person sitting next to them. They all have unique ways of learning, and will all ultimately utilize these tools in different ways for different tasks. I told them in June that I wanted that machine to feel like an extension of their hands & mind by the end of summer.
After that session, we dove into social bookmarking, simple blogging and discussion thread navigation within our shiny new Ning network, etc. Throughout the year we took a much more instructional path to our work sessions. However, I deeply maintain that giving careful time to the care, feeding, and customization -of whatever tech tool they are wanting to become native to them- is huge in the beginning. If it isn’t at the start, they enter their use of that machine with all of the same presuppositions about using a computer they came in with. In one short year, I have a solid half of those folks who can’t imagine their life (work or home) without OSX at their fingertips. That makes me happy.
This year, we bring on the other 50 staff members at my school… and I have a solid nucleus of increasingly-savvy folks to help me in this mission. Our focus on the lead-learner in the room first and foremost is organically bleeding into the classroom with students as it should. However, I am committed to stop our long-held strategy of putting powerful technology directly into the hands of students (a seemingly noble move) while ignoring the development of the teachers who guide them on a daily basis. In one short year, the uses of our ten student laptop carts moved quickly beyond rough Google search and word processing… and into the world of communicating, connecting and creating.
I think getting past the “curse of default settings” on day one has been an important step in helping my teachers jump past the “default settings” of what they have always done within the four walls of their classroom.
And by the way… I honestly cannot even remember what that ugly little chime even sounded like.
Sean
Sean Nashs last blog post..Compare & Contrast: With regard to what?
Dean this is so true. As humans we are truly victims of habit. More often than not we simply fall into these pitfalls due to plain old stubbornness to avoid change–heaven forbid–and an unawareness of what you really can do with technology and software. Like you stated Dean we need to be running technology rather than technology running us. I definitely agree with the IE data that you have. So many people that I know are constantly using IE and programs of the sort! Like you stated there are so many more options out there (FireFox is incredible I agree) that allow for your personal touch and customization. In this digital age where constant advancements are being made there is no reason why we should be unhappy with a specific feature/aspect of technology because there are 100x more options and/or add-ons available. Will we ever change, maybe, but at the same time as technology further changes are we going to keep up on it and know that there is even more out there past what we know is out there? Or are we slowly going to become the IE people of tomorrow? And like Errin I also didn’t know that you could turn off the start-up chimes–THANKS!
The case o IE vs Firefox is really a good example to describe the fear of Technology. The post is really informative. Thank you Dean for this post.
Thanks, Dean and Dave for revealing how to rid my computer of that awful sound at startup.
Another default pet peeve of mine for Word 2003 users (PC). Hate that startup pane on the right side? Everyone does and they typically X it. Instead, go to Tools > Options> View > Startup Task Pane. Gone. Forever.
Enjoyed the post for it’s sentiments as well as it’s practicality. Once again, I learned something new.
[...] 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment i read a great blog post here today that brought up some great points about default settings and how we are more prone to leave [...]