I was using my puter during class the other day when I was reminded of
something I’ve thought about in the past, which is the reasons why your grandmother
is never going to learn computers.
Let’s look at all of the different things going on in this screenshot,
and the distinctions between them.
First of all, we have no less than six control bars that Grandma will have
to look through to find the thing she wants to click, all stacked one on top of
another.
The first one contains, among other various operating system features,
the ability to switch between different programs. Grandma doesn’t know what
a program is, so this will be a source of confusion.
The second line has seven different menus for this particular program,
Firefox. If Grandma has figured out that Firefox has something particularly
to do with the internet, or is even aware of Firefox as a distinct entity,
it’s time to start questioning if she’s really a grandmother.
The third line has navigation buttons and two different text fields.
The navigation buttons will be a source of confusion because Grandma’s not
aware of the distinction between using the web browser and doing something
else. So for example if she opened the web
browser by clicking an icon on the desktop and she has a general sense
of what the “back” button is supposed to do, she’ll probably expect that
if she clicks the back button it will take her back to the desktop where she
can click on the pictures folder. However, the back button will probably
be disabled since this is the first page Grandma has opened, leading her
to think that the computer is broken or doesn’t like her.
Then there’s the subtle distinction between the two text fields. You
could try explaining to Grandma that if she
has an explicit “web address” (it’s something that ends in “dot com”, or
maybe “dot something else”, and it might have something after that too;
if it starts with “www” that’s a good sign, but that’s not guaranteed either)
she should use the left one, and use the right one for other things, but
that’s probably not necessary since they’re almost interchangable: if you
type your google query into the left text field, it’s probably going to
search google, and if you type a web address into the google search field
you’ll probably be at that site in a click or two. So the two text fields
don’t represent two distinct functionalities, but instead are merely a
reminder to Grandma that she doesn’t know what’s going on.
The fourth line has bookmarks. If Grandma has any bookmarks,
she’ll end up using them
to open up the same page repeatedly, since she doesn’t know about tabs
and can’t tell that the page is already open in a different tab.
This gets worse if she does figure out to click on the tabs some of the time
(maybe just because she thinks they’re bookmarks), because it will seem that
the browser can only remember the exact page she was on some of the time, and
the rest of the time it forgets and takes her to the main page (the one
actually bookmarked).
The fifth line has different browser tabs. Grandma will of course
confuse these with the bookmarks and with switching between different
programs. Just try explaining to Grandma the difference between a link
that opens a new tab and a link that changes the location of the current
tab (which is an important distinction if she’s going to be able to get
back to the page with the original link). Did she understand it? I didn’t
think so. Good thing you didn’t mention the possibility of a link opening
an entirely new window (whatever that is).
Then there’s the sixth line, which has various navigational links for getting
around Facebook. You never should have set up a Facebook account for your
grandmother, but since you did here’s how things get worse: Grandma doesn’t
understand the distinction between Facebook and the internet in general
(or her operating system). Especially now that this 6th bar has a search
field as well. So Grandma can’t tell if she’s supposed to search for things
in the Facebook search bar or the web browser search bar. The Facebook one
will give her general web results underneath all of the pages and groups
results, so she might tend to use that exclusively, but that gets problematic
if she’s on a site other than Facebook. So then she’ll tend toward the browser
search bar, but wonder why she can’t get her nephews’ pages to show up in the
results like it did that one time.
And then of course there’s more links, which have a similar functionality
to tabs, except that you can’t tell which one you’re on. The “Home” link
particularly may be confused with the Home icon in the third row of things,
if she’s figured out what that does.
So far we have three standard tab-like ways to switch between activities:
switching programs within the operating system, switching tabs within the
browser, and switching primary pages within Facebook. Could it get any worse?
Of course! Because she’s on the profile page for one of her relatives where
it has tabs for “Wall”, “Info”, “Photos”, etc. So she can even switch tabs
within the same page on Facebook.
By now the odds that Grandma will have any idea what’s going on are not the
kind that you’d want to risk even mildly serious money on. But just for good
measure, let’s throw in a little Facebook navigation bar at the bottom,
with some more
buttons and things. That’ll teach HER to try to keep in contact with her
family.
