How to help someone use a computer (1996)
pages.gseis.ucla.edu
pages.gseis.ucla.edu
So anyhow, someone has purchased a 486 PC with a CD player capable of playing audio CDs (hardware decoding at the time) but for the life of him couldn't get it to play the CDs he has purchased. Tried solving it over the phone to no avail so eventually had to go there in person and ... was left speechless. The guy was inserting CDs into the drive ... face up. I asked him why on Earth would he do that, it didn't occur to me someone would even attempt that. Well, he said, that's how you put records into a vinyl / turntable player, aren't you? Suddenly I realized how much implicit information we take for granted and explained him how it works with CDs.
The other case was a high school professor who had taken computer science classes and now has purchased a brand new computer with at the time new Windows 95. But couldn't do anything with it, nothing worked! I went there in person again and he showed me: started the computer which after boot logged in directly into Windows 95 (I think they didn't have a login prompt at the time). Then proceeded to the keyboard and typed "dir" then pressed Enter. "Look, see? Nothing!". Again it was a flabbergasting moment for me, realizing he'd taken DOS lessons :) Nobody told him about or shown him a graphical user environment so he was excused for trying to apply what he learned in those rather expensive private computer classes.
I encountered my first computer somewhere in '87 - '88 or something (1987 - 88 that is), it was one of these: http://retroit.ro/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/hc-85-maro-678x...
The gymnasium school I was attending at the time had one (and only one) of these provided by the communist state for educational purposes. The price at the time was prohibitive, about 10x the average salary and that without a floppy disk. Floppy would set you back another 10 salaries. But price tags were fairly pointless anyways, you couldn't get one even if you had the money because like cars, they weren't readily available. You'd sign up for a car and get it in maybe 5 years, with computers it was pretty much the same unless you had "relations" and used "lubricant". When my father bought the expensive cassette radio player that broke after several months he didn't pay for it as much with money as with a pair of these: https://frankfurt.apollo.olxcdn.com/v1/files/bnwivc6doz733-R... . Literally with cheese, not slang "cheese". Which even today are freaking expensive, back then were basically impossible to get unless ...
Well anyhow, I had attended various "school clubs" which promised to be slightly more interesting than the "math club" but they were all short lived, having been started by temp teachers who happened to be assigned to the school, worked in my village school for a year at most then took off.
So imagine my excitement when the school's director and math teacher called volunteers for a computer science club. I joined along with many others and the day came when thing got started. A TV got brought in along with the marvel, looking through manuals and manually turning knobs and revolving potentiometers we finally saw the "I.C.E Felix - H.C. 85" (Intreprinderea (de) Calculatoare Electronice Felix - Home Computer 85) message appearing on the screen ... and... it was at that point that the director realized he didn't knew anything more about using a computer. Power up, hook it up and ... that was it :) Talk about "I didn't thought this through" :D Frantically trying to figure out something he told us he's going to sign up for a computer science course and will resume the informatics club, left us kids with the computer for the rest of the class then closed the door of the laboratory never to open again :)
It did however prompt an interest in computers on my side, bought a book about them and didn't understood a single word, it was different from math. Eventually once I finished gymnasium I went for computer science class at the toughest high school in the county (informatics class being the toughest in high school of course) and my math club attendance (held by the very same gymnasium director) did help me in passing the cut-throat admission exam. 30 years later here I am, making a good living out of programming computers.
Dacia https://ro.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_1300 was such a vastly superior car to Trabant that it even transpired from popular culture into shows as Archer. Unfortunately like the computers, production was largely confined to citizens so not many might have heard about them (automotive and computer industry) abroad.
Sometimes I get the impression that they are so used to understanding things, and doing things based on that understanding, that they don't have experience and confidence with systems that no human likely even can understand fully.
These are people who can process input from their entire body at once while riding a skateboard. They can draw or sculpt or carve. They can play instruments and drive cars... But they're terrible with computers.
They are afraid to touch anything thinking the settings panel is full of instantly catch fire buttons. They touch the mouse with uncomfortable body language, like it's a pocket knife that has an overcomplicated spring mechanism you don't trust.
They don't try to solve problems themselves because they have lots of anxiety when they go near one.
In real life it doesn't work to say "Yeah I have no idea how any of this works but there's an undo button".
These highly capable people also seem to have boredom issues too. They can physically build something a faster than they can design and 3D print it. It probably doesn't feel as exciting when you can already do everything the machine can.
Apple is considered the top company for n00bs, but they rely heavily in gestures and your own memory. I suspect that it's not an easy system for "idiots" as some think, it's a system for people who aren't comfortable with indirection and like direct control.
Everyone always thinks users are idiots, but they can all do so much that I can't. I suspect they're just used to freedom living in the moment, and are strongly tactile and connected to their body, so that they don't really feel the artificial abstractions as real things they trust, plus they have active minds and are distracted by not understanding how something works, instead of just accepting it as probably some nonsense that a drunk coder made up that can't be changed because legacy.
I think this is so much more unintuitive and frustrating than what we had before...
* They have a CONSISTENT user interface. I am emphasizing this in caps despite going against style guidelines here because this is such an important thing that has gone out of style outside Apple. Everything in MacOS and iOS look and behave the same. Users worship consistency.
* They know and respect how humans behave. Ever seen those Windows desktops filled to the brim with icons? Well that's how most users use computers, and so that's how iOS presents itself to its users: All the icons on the screen, scrolling probably necessary but they're all on the screen.
* Following on the above, they know and respect that humans abhor complexity. Apple's mice have one/zero buttons because I can't tell you how many users simply do not understand nor care about left- and right-clicks, let alone middle-clicking the scroll wheel. Apple knows and respects that.
TL;DR: Apple is top dog because Apple is the only computing company that knows how to human.
I don't know if they still stress such things today, but based on my own experience as a user over the decades, I suspect that Apple does not stress this as much anymore. Obviously they do, to a certain extent, but I suspect they've lowered the bar on what is acceptable in shipping software.
They certainly did. Yosemite shocked me.
I'm a former Mac user (1992–2014; AppleSeed programme member 2009–2014). The GUI of OS X 10.10 Yosemite drove me away from Apple. I gradually switched from OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks to PC-BSD. Then TrueOS, then FreeBSD-CURRENT with KDE Plasma.
Using the default clock app, a timer has finished. How do you make it stop? Quick, an alarm has gone off. Which button is snooze and which button is stop?
I know it's minor, but if they can't even get that right, do you seriously think the rest is as consistent as you want it to be?
You know what really blew me away? When I found MacOS works practically identically to iOS and vice versa. Apple succeeded where Microsoft Fucking Failed and still Fails with three capital Fs. A consistent, single user interface transcending form factors and entirely different use cases that is also intuitive to most people on the planet.
Apple is fucking amazing at human'ing.
Instead, anytime I touch any Apple product, the original iPod notwithstanding, I want to throw the Apple product out an adjacent window in under 2 minutes.
They have trained generations of people in their weird ways, just like every other vendor.
How? Well, no one wants to admit they're too stupid to learn the first luxury-branded iProduct they just bought. If they can't use their first iProduct they can't extract status from visibly using it in front of others. So they dedicate themselves to learning their first iProduct. By the second iProduct, they're used to Apple's unintuitive UIs and part of the Apple-is-intuitive cult.
Motivated people can learn anything. Apple's trick is using social status desires to induce initial motivation.
The trick doesn't work on me. Hence me wanting to yeet iProducts out windows whenever I am forced to use them, usually because I have been asked to by a lifelong Apple user who can't figure out something on their allegedly intuitive device.
Well I had an Apple laptop provided by my previous employer and in the beginning it was all I had. Hated it deeply, everything in the UI seems to be on purpose set to be "not Microsoft or Linux".
On the other hand this reminds me of my first encounter with a graphical user interface, somewhere in '92 - '93. I was already studying computer science and had access to DOS-based PCs but my old gymnasium had received an Atari ST computer by donation from the "west". I was thoroughly fascinated by the mouse and since I already knew about filesystems from DOS it wasn't hard to figure out to use the "File Explorer" or whatever it was called. I had the contents of a folder displayed graphically, very nice, and when I wanted to "go in" some folder, I'd click on it to select it then obviously, navigate to the text menu of the window and select "open folder".
Every now and then some magic happened. Didn't know what I did or how I did it but the folder would magically open itself without the need to use text menu. This was an obviously very useful feature and after ruling out accident based on statistical occurrence (much like figuring out germ theory in 1850s London), I started to systematically hunt for what was causing it, writing out context, behavior, weather conditions, anything that would happen at the moment marvel occurred.
Eventually I figured it out: I was DOUBLE-CLICKING the mouse. By sheer human randomness and some computer software glitches, sometimes my click wouldn't be interpreted as "single click" as was all I knew but some accidental "multiple click", which on folders would open them.
I has (intentionally written grammatically incorrect for the fun factor effect) independently discovered the DOUBLE CLICK UI INTERFACE.
That's me too, but unlike you I understand that the problem is me and not Apple.
I have to fight and undo years if not decades of computing habits most people do not have, meanwhile most people take to Apple like moths to a light source because Apple builds their human interfaces for humans and not computer nerds like you and I.
I hate MacOS and iOS, but I understood and can now appreciate them once I forced myself to pretend I'm just Joe Average and not John Graybeard the 7th, Duke of Kernel.
But, yeah, usually my problems are me.
The most important things I learned about helping people:
1) Treat them with calm respect.
2) Let them drive. Don’t take the keyboard and and mouse.
3) Listen to them explain their problem, if they feel heard you’ve finished half the work.
4) Explain the solution and give them space to learn. Ideally, they never need help for this issue again, but if they do, just explain again.
That said, sometimes people are stressed and in a hurry and they just want the printer to work, so it’s better to skip the above and just fix the problem. But ask if this is what they want before proceeding.
I've been coding for -- holy crap I just did the math -- 46 years. I've been around computers almost my entire life, and like anyone with a similar background, I have a very deep understanding of what goes on behind the scenes and a strong intuition of how to use unfamiliar interfaces.
My wife, on the other hand, uses computers only because she has to. Whenever she has a problem, I always coach her through the solution if I can. I only take over if the solution is so arcane that she will never need to remember it (e.g. driver configurations). Coaching her reinforces her memory of the solution, and I also explain why she is doing each step if I can.
It's really basic learning theory: Providing background information on the problem and solution will help them understand. Allowing them to perform the task instead of just watching someone else reinforces learning as well. For bonus points, they also feel much more in control of the situation and they won't feel "talked down to" (at least not as much, or as often).
However, I also found that while there are people who are happy to learn and have stuff explained to them, be it related to computers, making bread from scratch or just about anything else, there are also people who just want things to be done for them, because they hate doing things they aren't well acquainted with themselves.
When I was a teen, until almost my mid-twenties, I've had mostly neighbours and my parents' friends or acquaintances ask for help to sort out their computer related problems they, or, most often, help was offered by my parents in my stead without me knowing about it until it would be too rude for me to refuse.
Most of them wanted the problem fixed in that particular instance to make it go away and just keep their fingers crossed that it wouldn't reoccur. I would usually offer that I'd try to teach them if it was something fairly simple. But then it would usually turn out that they only really agreed to appear polite. Most of them didn't care and looked mortified when I asked them to use the mouse and keyboard themselves after doing a demo so they could try it themselves. There was maybe one person who tried taking notes. Few asked questions, and most of the time, it had to be me to "goad" the questions or feedback out of them.
Sometimes, this was because they were just anxious, but mostly, it quickly became clear I was beating a dead horse and they weren't really interested and I would usually not be able to motivate them.
Eventually, I asked my parents to stop it and now if someone asks for my help and it isn't something complex, I only agree to help if they'd agree to learn in most cases, or if they consider it an emergency.
well, I don't want to label him in some way he might not want to be labelled, but if my life followed that trajectory... bit of a tragic life. He was a college professor, then he disappeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agre#Disappearance
>On October 16, 2009, Agre's sister filed a missing persons report for Agre.[6] She indicated that she had not seen him since the spring of 2008 and became concerned when she learned that he had abandoned his apartment and job sometime between December 2008 and May 2009.[6] Agre was found by the LA County Sheriff's Department on January 16, 2010, and was deemed in good health and self-sufficient.[7]
Somebody later updated his whereabouts on wikipedia but it got deleted because "biography of a living person" and "original research/not reliable source" but I think it was accurate. You can probably guess. Police were able to find him, he at that time did not wish to be contacted.
I'm not sure how different this link is, but it contains more links https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/rre.html
> Never do something for someone that they are capable of doing for themselves.
This seems like a good approach, and as if it must be educational, yet people may become upset if you are not helping them, likely because they are not sure if they are capable of doing those things. Even seemingly simple tasks occasionally turn out harder than expected: particularly online services often malfunction, so you have to work around their issues, often employing non-trivial technical expertise, creativity, and persistence to get things done; I think such cases erode the confidence of less tech-savvy people, and dealing with this broken stuff is an unpleasant experience even for tech-savvy ones. So, sometimes by doing something for someone that they are (probably) capable of doing for themselves, you can save them from some stress. Occasionally trying to do things on their own is still needed for learning, but not necessarily all the time.
Fair take. But how about this instead: do not position yourself anywhere near a situation where a human is about to get upset. About anything, but especially about broken tech.
That is one take about what makes a relationship close, obligation of mutual help. In my case it's different. What makes a relationships close is an intuition about how to proceed around each other's peeves and buttons and wounds. For example, one can avoid making me visibly upset by not mentioning their technical problems, or approaching the topic very very gently if so.
How to help someone use a computer (1996) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31308899 - May 2022 (5 comments)
How to help someone use a computer. (1996) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22989658 - April 2020 (1 comment)
How to help someone use a computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644200 - Aug 2010 (8 comments)
How to help someone use a computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=400048 - Dec 2008 (5 comments)
I lived in the 90s, and helped folks then, so I identify with all he wrote. But today it feels like the answers are really archaic...
In some ways we've simply solved the root issues - don't know the question to ask? (Solved). Don't know where the keys on the keyboard are (solved) and so on...
I guess its a bit like learning to drive a car in say 1910 versus 2010. In 1910 they would need to explain the gas pedal and steering wheel. In 2010 you need to teach defensive driving techniques and how to deal with road-rage.
Today it's less how to use a computer, and more how to filter other people who use it to absorb your attention.
(Grabs Cajori's History of Mathematical Notations.)
Apparently the use of parentheses to indicate function application "occurs in Euler in 1734" and in D'Alembert in 1754. The commas to separate multiple arguments appear in Euler in 1753. The standardization of this notation might have been "[d]uring the early part of the nineteenth century [when] functional notations found their way into elementary textbooks" such as Legendre's Elements of Geometry in 1845.
But there's still another tricky thread about how computer programs came to be organized into "functions" even when some of them (like print()!) aren't actually functions in the mathematical sense.
I'm not clear on how subroutines or subprograms became known uniformly as "functions". (I understand the analogy to mathematical functions, but early computer programming didn't consistently use that analogy, and many programming languages referred to subroutines or procedures rather than, for example, void functions.)
The C "void function" concept clearly contradicts what a "function" used to mean. I suspect the trend might have started somewhere around BCPL (before 1967), which was predecessor of B, which was predecessor of C. Its manual said:
> The semantics of a routine definition is exactly as for a function definition except that the body of a routine is a block and therefore its application yields no result.
They did not acquire any new knowledge now, but OS and interfaces made them confident to do things without thinking twice.
Or it is just that I am super nostalgic for the old times...
It was truly amazing for me when they all bought iPads and never needed any form of support that their immediate family couldn’t handle for them. Not only that though, it helped them get into the digital age, so they could use their online banking, be on social media with their grand children and be somewhat protected from themselves and the wider internet by Apples walled garden.
Of course the flip-side of this is that a lot of people aren’t actually very good at using computers today. Which ironically is a much bigger issue for younger people than the elderly. When I was in the public sector it was the 18-25 age group which scored the lowest on “digital prowess” which meant they’d sometimes get in a lot of trouble because they failed to perform some very basic tasks, like filling out a form on a website because “it wasn’t an app”. I guess you could argue that the public sector is sort of at fault for not building apps for everything to keep up with the times, but it’s something we see everywhere in society still. My wife works with dyslexic youths and it continues to amaze her just how much help they need to get the helper programs our government programs supply students with to work. To you and me it would likely to be a fairly simple task to get some document reader to work on Mac OS but she has students who need repeated lessons in how to keep it updated or not get locked out of it, or even how to get it to use a library as default if they aren’t saving things in the standard documents folder. I guess for most people it doesn’t really matter, but I think it’s amazing that we’re so digitally illiterate as a society in 2023. Especially here in Denmark, one of the most digitalised countries in the world.
I refuse to install apps that should be websites.
Curious, could you elaborate on it? Could they navigate to the website at all? Were they confused about cookie banners or other enshittification? Or about control of the browser itself, e.g. how to move to another field/page?
These aren't stupid people - they're well-qualified for and good at the rest of their jobs - they just haven't been in a position where anything "tech" has ever involved anything other than an app (or, I guess, auto-loaded browser shortcut?) on their phones. Using keyboard shortcuts is black magic, which some of them take to with delight, and others will never remember to try.
https://medium.com/swlh/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-...