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70 views7 pages

Media Unit 5 Part I Notes

Uploaded by

Mohd Shifan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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11/23/202

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Digital Divide: The 3
Stages

NN/g Nielsen Norman Group

World Leaders in Research-Based User


Experience

Digital Divide: The 3 Stages

Summary: The economic divide is a non-issue, but the


usability and empowerment divides alienate huge
population groups who miss out on the Internet's potential.

By Jakob Nielsen on November


19, 2006
Topics: Behavior
Patterns

The "digital divide" refers to the fact that certain parts of the
population have substantially better opportunities to benefit from
the new economy than other parts of the population. Most
commentators view this in purely economic terms. However, two
other types of divide will have much greater impact in the years
to
come.
Stage 1: Economic Divide

In its simplest form, the digital divide is manifested in the fact


that some people can't afford to buy a computer. Although
politicians always talk about this point, it's growing more
irrelevant with each passing day — at least in the industrialized
world. We should recognize that for truly poor developing
countries, computers will remain out of the average citizen's
reach for 20 years or more.

In areas like North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia's advanced


countries, computer cost is no longer an issue. Dell's cheapest
computer costs $379 (with a

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/digital-
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Digital Divide: The 3
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monitor) and is about 500 times as powerful as the


Macintosh Plus I used to write my Ph.D. thesis. While it's true
that a few people can't even afford $379, in another
five years, computers will be one-fourth their current
price. Would that all social problems would go away if we
simply waited five years.
Stage 2: Usability Divide

Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology
remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer
even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but
don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of
the available services are too difficult for them to understand.

Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills, and


yet few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy
users. Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually
written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend.
The British government has done some good work on simplifying
much of its direct.gov.uk site information, but even it requires
at least a high school education to easily read.

Lower literacy is the Web's biggest accessibility problem,


but nobody cares about this massive user group.

Senior citizens face the second-biggest accessibility


problem, but again there is little interest in the guidelines for
making websites easier for older users. Companies don't even
have the excuse that it doesn't pay to cater to this audience,
because retirees are rich these days. Even though seniors are the
main remaining source of growth in Internet use, companies are still
endlessly fascinated by young users and ignore older, richer
users who would be much more loyal customers -- if only
someone bothered to sell to them.
Whereas the economic divide is closing rapidly, I see little
progress on the usability divide. Usability is improving for
higher-end users. For this group, websites get easier every
year, generating vast profits for site owners. Because they
now follow
more e-commerce user experience guidelines, companies that
sell online typically https://www.nngroup.com/articles/digital-divide-the-three-stages/
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Digital Divide: The 3 Stages have


conversion rates of around 2%, which is twice the conversion
rate of the bubble years. That's all great news for high-end
users, but the less-skilled 40% of users have seen little in the
way of usability improvement. We know how to help these
users — we're simply not doing it.

Stage 3: Empowerment Divide

We have the knowledge needed to close the usability divide, and I


remain hopeful that we'll get the job done. The empowerment divide,
however, is the hard one: even if computers and the Internet were
extraordinarily easy to use, not everybody would make full use of the
opportunities that such technology affords.

Participation inequality is one exponent of the


empowerment divide that has held constant throughout all the
years of Internet growth: in social networks and community
systems, about 90% of users don't contribute, 9% contribute
sporadically, and a tiny minority of 1% accounts for most
contributions.

In researching how people use search engines for my seminar on


Top Web UX Design Guidelines, we've found that many users
don't know how to use search to truly master the Web. People don't
understand advanced search features, they rarely employ query
reformulation, and many uncritically select the first search results. Also,
listings, and
many users don't understand how search engines prioritize their
some users don't even know that the euphemistic label
"sponsored links" refers to paid advertisements. (For more info,
see Consumer Reports' study of what users know about search
ads.)

Because they lack the initiative and skill to take matters into
their own hands, some users remain at the mercy of other people's
decisions. For example, people sometimes accept the default
home page chosen by their computer vendor or ISP rather
than select one that's better suited to their needs. Again, this
means that the user's attention can be sold off like a sheep to
slaughter, as indicated by deals where search engines pay
computer vendors millions of dollars to be the default setting on
shipping PCs.

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Digital Divide: The 3
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Similarly, some users limit themselves to "free" Web applications that
display ads. What such users don't realize is that better
applications (more appropriate, powerful, and liberating ones)
are available at a cost that's far less than the value of the time they
waste trying not to look at the ads.

Prospects for Bridge Building

The Internet can be an empowering tool that lets people


find good deals, manage vendors, and control their finances and
investments. But it can just as easily be an alienating environment
where people are cheated. Members of the Internet elite don't realize
the extent to which less-skilled users are left out of many of the
advancements they cheer and enjoy.

Ultimately, I'm extremely optimistic about the economic divide,


which is vanishing rapidly in industrialized countries. The
usability divide will take longer to close, but at least we know how
to handle it — it's simply a matter of deciding to do so. I'm very
pessimistic about the empowerment divide, however, which I
expect will only grow more severe in the future.

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Rights Reserved.

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