Social experiments are in the news at the moment, but this was done with the subject’s full knowledge and co-operation.
The idea was to see whether it was possible to learn smartphones from scratch using just the manual, online help and a person who knows about these things (ie: me). It became immediately apparent that there are some things that have to be explained before you start, like getting the SIM in correctly, turning on, logging in to Google and simply knowing what the bright blue blazes it is you’re looking at. I tell you, Mars rover had an easy job of it!
The fact is that the learning curve is so steep, it’s vertical. I’ve likened it to learning to drive – you can’t do the accelerator one day, steering the next and brakes the day after. You might manage to hold off changing gear until the second lesson, but it wouldn’t be pretty!
I’ve tried to sit on my hands as much as possible and have also been reminded to. I’m an inveterate manual reader (yes, I know … a bloke who reads manuals!) and recommended this as an initial approach. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand it, the idea is just that you know what’s there so that you can go back to it later”. That lasted all of five minutes because the truth is that even the best manuals aren’t written in a language that the average crumbly-in-the-street would recognise as English. [Wife wishes it to be noted that she isn’t very crumbly and the remark is not intended as an insult! Hrym concurs.] It’s all Geek to them. This isn’t the manuals’ fault, the fact is that Smartphone is a completely different language. Mrs hrym has given some examples. I came to Android from Symbian and it was a bit like going from DesqView to Windows 3 (for all you vintage computing enthusiasts out there). It did the same things, but just MUCH more simply. Yes, I’ll say it proudly: I am a Geek!
My wife is nervous of technology, but gets on with it very well if there’s something she wants to do, and there have been examples of her doing just fine on her own. I haven’t been able to help with Facebook, for instance, but she knows the web interface and adapted to the mobile one quite happily. It’s very much a confidence thing and what’s impressed me most is that she’s gone from regarding my phones as the spawn of the devil (due to the problem of only ever using them in a moving car with the screen jumping about and causing all sorts of mis-taps) to happily emailing, texting and updating Facebook on the go. And all this in just a month. There are still things I have to help with and introduce her to and I’m trying to keep them to, “did you know you can…?”, leaving her to find out how, but it’s still quite tricky.
To clarify the use of “crumbly”: I meant that we are looking at this from the point of an older person who hasn’t grown up with technology from birth and is, not entirely unjustifiably, a bit nervous about it. It’s better than those horrible words “senior” and “elder”, which just strike me as patronising.
