HACKER Q&A
📣 dizzydes

Non-Traditional Users


We're building a jobs marketplace for construction workers.

One of the challenges is that they're used to doing everything through phone calls so they keep bouncing back to that (for now we're happy to take these calls to learn). There's also lower avg computer literacy compared to other professions and some language barriers.

So far, we've:

- Translated our frontend into five different languages

- Put in many tooltips to guide people through, some in multiple places

- Considered one initial tutorial call ("managed marketplace")

- Built in automated responses to our job alert chat bots in case they think its a human operator

Would love to hear war stories from people who overcame challenges like this. Reading recommendations also appreciated!

  👤 h2odragon Accepted Answer ✓
How about employing actual people for them to talk to, as that's the interface they're comfortable with.

"We could help our users if only they would totally change their behavior" isn't a path to success.

Get some folks out into your target user's pockets for a couple weeks. You'll gain some understanding of why they need a low attention interface; they have other plates in the air which are far more urgent on a meat level, all the time.

Even when they're relaxed and not working, the imperatives of the workday leave that mark.

👤 Deeznutzs
When you say "Translated our front-end into five different languages." Is one of those plain English minus overly technical jargon? Overly technical terms do not help the less educated to become more educated until they are put into terms they do understand. I once had a CNC trainee that had a hard time with understanding how Z offsets worked on the vertical mill, and I explained it to him "In terms of Wheat and Corn." You wanna mow your wheat (x) and corn (y) to varying heights (z).... so what do you do? He immediately had an epiphany, chuckled and says "you just set your mower deck higher (+) or lower (-), I get it now and feel like an idiot!"
👤 dieselgate
You mention "construction workers" but that's a massive group. Is this targeting large infra/Union construction, commercial or residential etc?

I'd recommend you post this to DIYchatroom forum, it's a sibling forum to ContractorTalk (which is explicitly licensed-contractor Only), but many contractors are active on both.

My opinion is this could be a better fit for larger projects (Commercial) whereas most residential crews are small in comparison - think you'd get a more relevant discussion from the mentioned sites than HN. How does this compete with Unions?

Edit: said it in another comment but biggest thing for me is works well on android. And fwiw I'm a licensed contractor

👤 keiferski
This seems like a project where AI text to speech tools would be useful.

I would throw out all assumptions about how websites are “supposed to” look and just figure out how to best replicate a phone-first workflow on a website. Presumably with AI tools, as I mentioned above, but also making the site super simple, with large icon buttons, etc.