Hi, On Tuesday 14 November 2006 11:13, John Andersen wrote: > ... > > Never touch the keyboard or mouse while teaching people a new > system. Make them drive. Make them open documents. Make them > send email.
I think this is very good advice. It accomplishes two things: 1) The user learns much better how to accomplish something because they're involved in it. This reinforces learning much better than being told and even better than being shown. 2) The support / administrator / educator learns how their model of an application or a system differs from that of the users they support. This allows them to better understand those users and give them what they need, whether it's better instruction or better documentation or better selection of software from which to choose. It's akin to good user testing (perhaps a misnomer, 'cause it's not the user being tested, but rather their interaction with the software), where you let the user work with your application. The person administering these tests does not help the user, but only encourages the user to verbalize what they're thinking as they attempt to accomplish some task. In the personal computing world, Apple is the pioneer and king of this kind of testing, and that's why their software is almost always much more usable than anyone else's. > ... Randall Schulz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
