The Curse of Knowledge

On one sunny day in this wintry weather, sitting at home and surprised and happy at my dad’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge on learning computer (Knowledge is DiWine!! Hahaha), amidst lots of chaos, I tried to help him learn the basic activity we all are so very dependent on, checking email!! I told him, how to open internet explorer and where to type the address, where to type the user name and password, demoed it for him once and asked him to show me how to do it without my help.

Dad was excited. I stood back, watching him. He opened the window all right, and alas, typed his username in the explorer window instead of www.gmail.com. I was patient. After all he is new to all this. I helped him again and when for the fourth time in a span of 30 minutes, he again did the same, I was frustrated. I mean, how can people not know this simple task? How can they forget what they did just five minutes back? Am I bad at teaching or is dad bad at learning? Were my instructions so unclear? Dammit, I am supposed to be good at giving (rather writing!) instructions, that’s my job!! Dad gave me a guilty look, I felt pity for the old man. Its okay dad, u will learn slowly…there is plenty of time. This was all I managed to say.

In a similar scenario, I was trying to teach my grandpa how to use his mobile phone. (Yes people, I always end up teaching someone or the other!! Its in my blood!! My mom was a teacher for 19 years!! ) that phone was a very basic model unlike the latest gadgeted phones that we all own nowadays. So basic that it did not even have an MP3 player or a radio!! (shoot!! Isn’t that the most basic then??). I kept teaching him how to check missed calls and how to check his messages, when he suddenly gave me a weird look and asked me where I learnt all this. “ Summi, you never had a mobile phone or a computer, how did you learn so much that you are working on them now??” I was taken aback, but then, I smiled and told him, that you just need to know and understand English to understand how to use something, its as simple as that!! I also told him, that’s what I do to earn. I translate tough procedures into simple English and help people like him understand how to use something. We got back to making him learn how to use his mobile phone.

I am considered tech savvy in my family. I am crazy about gadgets. They make life easier, don’t they?? When I take my laptop to show movies to my kid over the weekend, I am admonished by my mom that I am spoiling my kid with all this technology. For me, someone who types with a single finger on the keyboard is a criminal. People who don’t know that there are two types of clicks that you can do with a mouse, are ignorant like hell!! People who can’t differentiate between a pop-up window and a page do not deserve to use computers at all. I cannot imagine users of Internet not understanding how to disable a popup blocker or not knowing how to do a simple task, like checking emails!! I am stunned at users who double-click when they should single-click, or who single-click when they should double-click. I am surely cursed, with the curse of knowledge. I know so much that I cannot imagine others not knowing it. I write for myself and not for my end-users because of this curse.

I tend to take things like installing freeware on my machine for granted. What’s the big deal in that, I just have to click “Next” in 3-4 windows and the software in installed. Call it my overconfidence or non-confidence in the user manuals, I never check the user manual before starting using something new. I am too proud and too intelligent (am i??) to admit that I cant figure something out by myself and need some “technical writer” to tell me how to use my oven!! Comeon, I have been cooking since I was a kid, what’s the big deal?? All this is due to my curse of knowledge.

Curse of knowledge: The More You Know, the Worse You Become At Communicating That Knowledge. Yes, and I admit I am facing it now. Be it a UI review of an application, be it thinking like my end-users, empathizing with them, and writing for my audience in their language or keeping it short and sweet, its tough for me not to be a technical writer and just be an end-user and write a manual, or a user guide. How difficult is it to be back to basic, unlearn all that you have learnt about English grammar and write for an audience based in America and again switch back to British users and write in a flowery language? Trust me, its tough!!

We get carried away with explaining things when we know a lot about a subject. Ask a developer a simple question like what’s the difference between front end and back end, and I am sure he/she will go into depth about it, not considering the simple fact whether the person who is listening is technically challenged or not!! Technically challenged, as in physically challenged, as in, people like me!! We take our listener, the seeker of knowledge for granted, we think he/she will understand whatever we say because he/she asked a question on our subject. I am sure most of us have had such kind of experiences in the meetings that we attend!! I am not an exception though! ask me about something I am good at, my subject, and I am in my own halo of knowledge, explaining as if I will never meet the person who has asked me the question again, and as if its 2012 and the world is going to end in 5 minutes and that’s what I am left with to explain!! 

Yes people, Without us knowing, we are all cursed with the curse of knowledge!! How we break away from from it, I leave it to you people to decide!!

Disclaimer: I picked up the phrase “The Curse of Knowledge” from Tom Johnson’s blog www.idratherbewriting.com. He states he picked it from the book “Made to Stick- Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath.