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GNOME for Grandma
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld colmnist Matthew Newton has written an interesting two part article titled "In Search of Linux for Grandma", in which he shares his thoughts on introducing computers to a 75 year old PC neophyte (through Linux).
He discusses the new spatial Nautilus that he is planning to unleash upon grandma, and quote from the article - "Grandma is never going to learn about "opening a file manager" to "navigate her way" to her documents. They are all going to live in plain view in folders on her desktop. And when she opens them, there won't be any surprises."."
My grandma's a command line hacker. She thinks GUI's are weak. :/
Perhaps one explanation for the poor usability of many open source apps is that while open source may be a great way to engineer software, the lone hacker collaborating via the Internet is ill-equipped to do anything even approaching proper usability testing.
All may not be lost, perhaps a software tool could be written to make such usability testing easier. It could record a user's desktop(perhaps using something like VNC), while also recording their audio commentary on what they are doing.
Do we think Linux is ready for this. Yes I admit if you have some one set it up well, any one can use it. But Grandma might hear of software X and want it. How will the be done, aka, I heard I can do my taxes on the computer with turboTax, can you set it up for me.
what are you going to tell her, if you can not get it to work with wine?
I like the idea, but I am not sure Linux is ready
As a 48 yo grandmother, I am offended that people equate being a grandmother with having a low level of technical competance.
ROCHESTER, MN--Karen Widmar, 33, who for the past two months has been trying to teach her 60-year-old mother how to use the Internet, called the endeavor "a Sisyphean ordeal" Monday.
Above: Lillian Widmar attempts to e-mail her daughter.
"Jesus Christ, you have no idea," said Widmar after yet another unsuccessful lesson. "Every single thing I show her, no matter how simple, totally freaks her out. She's still afraid to click on pictures because she doesn't know where it's going to take her."
Widmar said she introduced her mother Lillian to the Internet at her request.
"It's funny, I was always trying to get her interested so I could e-mail her," Widmar said. "Then, one day, she called me up and said she was watching Today, and they had a guest on who made potatoes, and the recipe was online, and was that the same as the Internet? When I told her it was, she got really excited. Maybe I should've lied."
According to Widmar, the troubles began immediately.
"Trying to show her how to use the mouse took almost a week," Widmar said. "For some reason, she got it in her head that you had to hold the button down to make it move. Then, when I explained that the computer communicates over the telephone via her built-in modem, she kept asking where you hold the receiver. And she wouldn't stop calling the keyboard 'the typewriter.'"
Still more complications arose when Widmar tried to show her mother how to navigate a search engine.
"For practice, I logged onto Yahoo! and had her search for cheesecake recipes," Widmar said. "She got totally confused by the fact that we were searching within a web site for other web sites. She kept typing her keyword searches into the Internet Explorer address bar, not into the Yahoo! search bar. Then, when she accidentally typed 'cheesecake' into the Explorer box, it actually worked, because there happened to be a web site called that, so that just confused her even more."
After nearly a month, Lillian had finally gotten to the point where she could log onto a web site on her own. Almost every time, however, something unexpected would occur, causing her to panic and call her daughter for help.
Above: Karen Widmar with her mother Lillian, who continues to struggle with Internet use.
"It could be almost anything," Widmar said. "She goes apeshit whenever a pop-up window comes up. And one time, she paged me because she got a message about accepting cookies. She was all freaked out because now she thought she was being charged for actual cookies."
Widmar said her mother still does not grasp the difference between the Internet and e-mail.
"Whenever she wants to send me an e-mail, she says she's going to Internet me," Widmar said. "I think that's because we use AOL, so she has to log onto the Internet to do her e-mailing. Then there's chat rooms, which she thinks is e-mail. I just pray she never finds out about message boards. That'll throw her whole world into a tailspin."
Despite knowing next to nothing about computers or the Internet, Lillian will frequently attempt to troubleshoot problems using new terms she had heard.
"Every time she hears a new word involving computers, she incorporates it into her questions," Widmar said. "Last time she called, she said she couldn't get her e-mail working and that there must be something wrong with her firewall. I tried to explain that she didn't have a firewall, so she said her Java must be broken."
Widmar said her mother is a fairly anxious person in general, and that her recent forays into Internet use have only exacerbated those tendencies. Among her mother's greatest fears, Widmar said, is that she will be the target of computer crime.
"Last week, she freaked out because she got a porn spam," Widmar said. "Now she thinks they're targeting her for stalking or kidnapping. She wouldn't go near her computer for four days. She was also convinced that because the computer could send photos, it was capable of taking photos of her, maki
when she finds out that this revolutionary idea of opening a new window for each folder is one of the first features users turned off in windows 95
Have you Meta Moderated t
Where's the CowboyNeal option?
I recently visited my Grandmother, who is quickly approaching 80 years of age. She is *highly* non-technical, and her spouse recently passed away, so she is pretty much on her own (in more ways than one, obviously).
We bought a simple Compaq for her back in the late '90's which was running Windows '98. It was a constant source of consternation and trouble. I spoke with her, and after a little debating, convinced her to 'revolutionize' her computing experience by installing Linux.
This I infact did, putting SuSE on her machine. I told her: "now, just leave the machine on all the time. You can leave the 'internet' window (aka, browser) always open. Be happy!"
Happy she is. While the DE used is actually KDE, the success of her transition goes to show that Linux is ready. In all honesty, I was surprised with the rapidity with which she grew accustomed to her system.
The most advantageous thing about moving her over: no longer are there long stretches of time where she can't email because her computer is on the fritze (she often had to wait for me or her son to visit and correct things). We've been in constant electronic communication since. It's wonderful.
My grandma is running Debian/woody on the machine I setup for her.. I locked most of her config files so that no matter what she does, it will not automaticaly save session information.. so if she messes it up, she can just reboot.
I setup 4 icons for her to click on.. OpenOffice 1.0 (writer), Mozilla, Mozilla Mail, and a button that does a shutdown -h now.. that's it..
I also setup the system with diald, so she doesn't have to figure out how to startup a ppp session.. works great.. she only calls me once a month about "problems with the computer" which always mean, something she forgot, and is doing incorrectly.. like when trying to click with the mouse, highlighting text in OOo, and then typing over the top of whole paragraphs of text.
"grandma, just use the keyboard"
This is one of the oldest and one of the dumbest arguments in UI design.
:)
Think about it... was your TV really designed to work like something else? Pressing buttons to change "channels", turn on "muting" and show "closed captioning" are all pretty abstract and bizarre sounding concepts to someone who has never used a TV. The TV user had to learn all this stuff from scratch, yet few people complain about this.
Computers shouldn't be built to behave like TV's, and TV's shouldn't be built to behave like toasters. The user interface for technology should reflect the best and most efficient way to use that particular piece of technology. If you do it right (and there's no magic bullet, other than KEEP IT SIMPLE), your average grandma will learn it just fine. Give people some credit, they're not quite as stupid as they look
With all due respect, you're 48. You may be a grandmother, but there's no way (I sincerly hope) that your grandchild(ren) are old enough to build you a computer and be this bent on forcing Linux on you. Those that do have granchildren of that age aren't likely to have nearly the level of technical expertise that people from your age group. My pop's older than you, and uses PGP, open GPG, and absurdly complicated VB scripting regularly, but his mother would be greatly helped by this kind of GUI.
I thought the article to be very insightful/interesting, as it would greatly simplify my grandmother's life.