One of the biggest user issues we have had to deal with in doing business from day to day is computer fear. Lots of people are convinced that if they strike a key without permission, the computer will blow up, or all the data will be deleted, and the boss will fire them for destroying the whole computer system. At one time, it may have been true that people needed a lot of skills and training to operate a computer, but if we haven't built "user-friendly" into our programs by now, we're not doing our job.
I was even surprised to see the term "user-friendly" in the specifications for a job we bid recently. To us, it goes without saying! Writing a program that works but is difficult to use is like baking bread that's hard as a rock - it might be nourishing, it might even taste good, but it's still no good if you can't chew it. We always build in safeguards so that a casual user can't wipe everything out with a wrong guess. Many people of our generation are still a little afraid of computers, especially if they're not used to using them. When an error box pops up and says "That file cannot be located", they panic, and call us, and ask us what to do. That's okay! It's all part of our job description to hold people's hands and walk them through these things until they feel more confident in dealing with them.
All computer support people deal with this. I knew a young man who worked in technical support for a hospital system. I overheard him making a call from a party, to answer one of his pages, and it all sounded very familiar to me.
"I want you to reboot and then page me if that doesn't solve the problem."
This is known as "Reboot and call me in the morning", from the old doctor's joke that they could deal with most patient's calls by saying "Take an aspirin and call me in the morning". Yes, we've been called out on emergency visits by panicking clients whose printers wouldn't print - because the machine wasn't plugged in. It's just one of those expensive lessons that has to be learned the hard way.
There are signs that computer fear is on its way out, however. Every year we run into fewer adults in business who are totally new to computers. Young people are all familiar with using PCs in some form, thanks to the schools. Most young people have some kind of Internet access in grade school and high school, almost all college students have free access accounts. Young people see the computer as a friendly tool to get what they want done - not an evil monster that's smarter than they are. The kids are right, too. After all, computers didn't invent human beings.