Technology

59436 readers

3939 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

230

"How to help someone use a computer.", a guide from 1996 (pages.gseis.ucla.edu)

submitted 8 months ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I've quoted the text from that post below:

This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It's strikingly resonant with 'how to be a parent', or really 'how to help anyone with anything'. A nice example of "the universal within the particular"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

In particular, I think there are parts of this guide that are relevant to how we introduce new technologies to other people, be it privacy tools or the Fediverse.

[–] AnarchistArtificer 18 points 8 months ago

I agree, this is great. I really liked:

"Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces."

and

"Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. "

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, everything here is great advice for teaching anything to somebody. I'm about to be involved with my company's training soon, and I'm saving this article to refer to when I start writing our materials.

[–] KreekyBonez@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

I'm trying to take a more active roll in training new machines operators at my job, and it's only because the current training manager actively does the opposite of 90% of the stuff on this list. I'm getting tired of being called in to "fix" stuff that's just an error of bad training.