Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Basic computer instructions

I ran across this post about basic computer instructions today over my lunch break and thought it was interesting. As the computer tech for my company I have more stories than I can count, still it amazes me when people who use computers every day have to be told, "you have to turn it on for it to work" or "you have to plug in the computer for it to work" (sometimes back to back). What are some of the best stories Mod-Bloggers have about this type of thing. I do ask that we not mock those of older generations who are just not used to computers, but people that use them all the time are fair game.

1 comment:

Nomad said...

My best example was when I was working at an insurance company with a lot of nurses. They were all highly-intelligent ladies, but not all were computer literate. One day, I got a call that a nurse was having a CRITICAL problem and could not get to the next screen. I called her up and we walked thru the process. "Now, hit [ENTER]." I said. She said she did and nothing happened. "Weird. Try hitting the [RETURN] key instead." She said she did, and nothing happened. She complained that computers were too complicated and that we'd all be better off going back to paper. I decided to walk upstairs to sit down and walk thru the process with her.

I got there and had her hit [ENTER] again. She promptly reached out and pressed the space bar. She looked at me with a smug expression. I took a deep breath and explained the difference between [SPACE] and [ENTER] or [RETURN]. She grumbled something about Computers being too complicated, hit the right key, saw things progress correctly, and then thanked me.

And please note, this was on keyboards that printed "ENTER" and "RETURN" on keys in large, clear lettering.