I had the opportunity today of watching an (obviously) novice computer user engage in an epic battle with Clip--the paper-clip assistant in Microsoft Office. It was really quite humorous.
The user was attempting to type a resume. Since the user didn't really know much about how to format a document in Microsoft Office, she chose to use the Resume Wizard to help lay the document out for her.
The problem with this was, after Word was done formatting the document, it continued trying to be helpful by having Clip ask the user some other questions related to the resume. In other words, Clip was there on-screen with the (not-so) little cartoonish-looking dialog bubble waiting for the user to select an option or type something or other into that bubble.
The user, of course, didn't want to do that, but didn't really know how to to make it go away. So, she kept moving Clip around the screen as she was typing in various different areas of the page. You could tell she was getting frustrated because Clip and his dialog bubble always seemed to be in the way, but she had no clue how to make him go away.
I finally felt sorry for her and offered to show her how to get rid of that particular annoyance. She was grateful, but the funny thing is, when I walked by about 15 minutes later, Clip was back up on the screen, helpfully getting in her way again. She didn't remember how to get rid of him.
Wow. It's no wonder so many people use Windows. They just don't know any better.
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