This could probably be phrased in a better way (for one thing I’m pretty sure I’m not being mathematically rigorous about ‘distributions’). But the basic thing here is: if you spend 10 seconds being confused about something, don’t assume that most other people would be confused for about ~10 seconds, with some people being confused for ~5 seconds and others confused for ~15 seconds, and maybe some small fractions of people who might be confused for ~20 seconds or not confused at all. Instead assume that the majority of people will be confused for 5 seconds, but some poor unfortunate soul will spend 5 entire minutes before getting it, and some truly unfortunate soul will be confused for 5 straight hours before someone sets them straight.
Generally I think this is true because 1) mistakes ~compound (eg. if you thought the colour scheme on a spreadsheet meant something different to what it actually meant, then you’re also more likely to have wrong contextual clues which lead to you misinterpreting the times or the number formats in the spreadsheet), 2) some small fraction of ways to misunderstand something are responsible for a vast majority of the disastrous confusion possibility (while other mistaken-understandings are non-harmful or easily-clarified), 3) people who get sufficiently overwhelmed often just give up and then suffer consequences later (eg. sufficiently confused by the app that they didn’t read the information in the app → now they are missing information they need to understand a class → now they are super-confused in class, falling behind and missing new information...)
If confusion was normally distributed (eg. 1 person is confused for 1 second, 2 people are confused for 5 seconds, 5 people are confused for 10 seconds, 2 people are confused for 15 seconds, 1 person confused for 20) then you should assume you are towards the centre of the distribution (because that’s statistically likely) and most people will be confused for roughly the same amount of time you’re confused for (some more, some less). If confusion is power-law-distributed (eg. 10 people confused for 1 second, 2 people confused for 100 seconds, 1 person confused for 10000 seconds), you should assume you are among the least-confused group, because the least-confused group is the most common group. (On the other hand, if you seem very unusually confused about something, you might consider the possibility that it’s not that the topic is inherently that confusing—it’s that you’re the odd one out this time.)
This very much guides my approach to managing/teaching/coordinating/etc. If an app / spreadsheet / schedule / document / form is made in a slightly confusing way—so that I looked at it for ten seconds going “huh???” and then went “oh, that’s how that works”—I immediately conclude that I don’t like this app/spreadsheet/schedule/document/form and I want to make a new simpler one. Not because I am so lazy that I can’t push through ~10 seconds of confusion, but because that tells me that somebody is going to look at it for a minute going “huh???????????”, then decide “I can’t be bothered with this right now so I’ll handle it later”, then never handle it later, then mention after a class that they were utterly lost and didn’t follow any of the information because they felt like they were missing some prerequisite context.
If I’m managing volunteers then I insist on only presenting them with schedules & spreadsheets & apps & programs & asset folders that I would be happy to explain to a 5 year old while drunk.
This is a very tiny thing, but I really don’t like using “Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave/Dan, Eve/Erin, Frank” as the generic characters in parables/dialogues/problems. Why are we alternating binary genders?? Even leaving aside nonbinary inclusivity, it’s literally just clearer and easier to write if I’ve got a he, a she, and a zie (rather than it being ambiguous whether “she” refers to Alice or Carol). I’m not always consistent with it, but generally my imaginary characters are more like Alice, Bob, Charlie, Delilah, Ethan, Fern, etc, and Charlie and Fern use gender-neutral pronouns like they/them or xe/xir. (Though I’ve also been contemplating the idea that it’s better to cycle the names and use different ones per post, so you can refer back to the ideas using the names as a handle: Alice, Bob, Charlie, Delilah, Ethan, Fern, Georgia, Hassan, Indie, Julie, Kasimir, Lei...)
Assume that confusion is power-law-distributed:
This could probably be phrased in a better way (for one thing I’m pretty sure I’m not being mathematically rigorous about ‘distributions’). But the basic thing here is: if you spend 10 seconds being confused about something, don’t assume that most other people would be confused for about ~10 seconds, with some people being confused for ~5 seconds and others confused for ~15 seconds, and maybe some small fractions of people who might be confused for ~20 seconds or not confused at all. Instead assume that the majority of people will be confused for 5 seconds, but some poor unfortunate soul will spend 5 entire minutes before getting it, and some truly unfortunate soul will be confused for 5 straight hours before someone sets them straight.
Generally I think this is true because 1) mistakes ~compound (eg. if you thought the colour scheme on a spreadsheet meant something different to what it actually meant, then you’re also more likely to have wrong contextual clues which lead to you misinterpreting the times or the number formats in the spreadsheet), 2) some small fraction of ways to misunderstand something are responsible for a vast majority of the disastrous confusion possibility (while other mistaken-understandings are non-harmful or easily-clarified), 3) people who get sufficiently overwhelmed often just give up and then suffer consequences later (eg. sufficiently confused by the app that they didn’t read the information in the app → now they are missing information they need to understand a class → now they are super-confused in class, falling behind and missing new information...)
If confusion was normally distributed (eg. 1 person is confused for 1 second, 2 people are confused for 5 seconds, 5 people are confused for 10 seconds, 2 people are confused for 15 seconds, 1 person confused for 20) then you should assume you are towards the centre of the distribution (because that’s statistically likely) and most people will be confused for roughly the same amount of time you’re confused for (some more, some less). If confusion is power-law-distributed (eg. 10 people confused for 1 second, 2 people confused for 100 seconds, 1 person confused for 10000 seconds), you should assume you are among the least-confused group, because the least-confused group is the most common group. (On the other hand, if you seem very unusually confused about something, you might consider the possibility that it’s not that the topic is inherently that confusing—it’s that you’re the odd one out this time.)
This very much guides my approach to managing/teaching/coordinating/etc. If an app / spreadsheet / schedule / document / form is made in a slightly confusing way—so that I looked at it for ten seconds going “huh???” and then went “oh, that’s how that works”—I immediately conclude that I don’t like this app/spreadsheet/schedule/document/form and I want to make a new simpler one. Not because I am so lazy that I can’t push through ~10 seconds of confusion, but because that tells me that somebody is going to look at it for a minute going “huh???????????”, then decide “I can’t be bothered with this right now so I’ll handle it later”, then never handle it later, then mention after a class that they were utterly lost and didn’t follow any of the information because they felt like they were missing some prerequisite context.
If I’m managing volunteers then I insist on only presenting them with schedules & spreadsheets & apps & programs & asset folders that I would be happy to explain to a 5 year old while drunk.
This is a very tiny thing, but I really don’t like using “Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave/Dan, Eve/Erin, Frank” as the generic characters in parables/dialogues/problems. Why are we alternating binary genders?? Even leaving aside nonbinary inclusivity, it’s literally just clearer and easier to write if I’ve got a he, a she, and a zie (rather than it being ambiguous whether “she” refers to Alice or Carol). I’m not always consistent with it, but generally my imaginary characters are more like Alice, Bob, Charlie, Delilah, Ethan, Fern, etc, and Charlie and Fern use gender-neutral pronouns like they/them or xe/xir. (Though I’ve also been contemplating the idea that it’s better to cycle the names and use different ones per post, so you can refer back to the ideas using the names as a handle: Alice, Bob, Charlie, Delilah, Ethan, Fern, Georgia, Hassan, Indie, Julie, Kasimir, Lei...)
(edited for brevity)