One of the challenges is capturing and holding people's attention long enough for them to learn something. Many people are impatient and (somehow) figure out just enough to get by and that's as far as they'll ever go, even when it's "crippling" them. I was quite surprised when I discovered a friend who's been using Macs for over ten years was totally unaware of control-click contextual menus, some which were exactly what she needed for functionality she'd long wanted in certain apps. Of course there's no set of "minimal basic requirements" for computer usage.

Something else that's noticeably lacking is education/training within a larger context of usability, e.g. Internet services. Yesterday I wrote this on some forum:

I'm not sure it's computer expertise per se that's lacking or what's necessary. When considering factors contributing to various e-mail related problems (some significant, like spam and viruses) on the 'net today aren't people who just "don't know better" and are unaware of negative consequences of their actions sharing some level of responsibility? Ignorance surely seems an inadequate excuse or defense. Hmm, maybe that sounds like I'm making innocent victims guilty. It's more like wondering how to help people help themselves so they avoid being victims at all.

That was related to thoughts I've had about how to integrate "newbie assistants/assistance" in webmail, for example.

So should we be thinking more seriously about "smart software" that assists with education/training for issues like that? Just distributing information about them doesn't seem to be enough to get people to take notice and respond. But you don't want to be intrusive either. Hmm... how might things be if spam were actually a *positive* information distribution resource? :-)