Introducing and elderly computer novice to Macintosh

On 1 Apr 2005, at 16:24 :17, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> Can Mail.app be forced to never use that bloody two-pane view and thus
> enforce that the user needs to double-click messages?

Sorta. You can hide the preview pane by double clicking the
separator; then you double click a message to open it it a separate
window.

This would work better if, in thread view, "opening" a thread only
opened the UNREAD messages in the thread, but it still works.

this is, in fact, how I currently am using Mail. i usually select a
batch of 10 or 15 messages and open them all at once, then close each
window as I am done with it. After 5 years of Mail.app I've recently
decided that yes, I really do hate, loath, and despise the preview pane.

I am still frustrated that Apple will not allow me to "page through"
multiple messages, but this solution seems to be working for me.

On 4/1/2005 15:24, "Sander Tekelenburg" <tekelenbeuronet.nl> wrote:

> Can Mail.app be forced to never use that bloody two-pane view and thus
> enforce that the user needs to double-click messages? (I've showed him how to
> open messages by double-clicking, but he often still messes up between single
> and double-clicks, and with the preview pane, that means he'll still 'lose'
> messages. Plus the idea that you can do one thing in several different ways
> only confuses the hell out of him.)

That's how I use Mail. (I generally don't like the preview pain [sic],
although I've begun to make exceptions where I use it, like nice safe
company mail.)

It's not obvious, but drag the divider between the message list and the
preview pane all the way to the bottom. I think you have to drag it by the
little nearly invisible dot, but I'm not sure.

A nice item in the View menu for showing or hiding the preview pane would be
much nicer. And an icon one could add to the toolbar for toggling the
preview pane would be nice (Outlook Express (Windows has that).

A thread here or elsewhere led me to be pretty sure that once the preview
pane is zero size, Mail stops thinking its there in terms of opening
messages.

Until Entourage was "improved" in Office 2004, it had keyboard commands that
would toggle the preview pane on and off. Now there are commands for the
two places the thing could be, but no off (so one uses the menus).

  --John

At 03:24 PM 04/01/2005 -0800, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Maybe. I tend to advise an iMac G5, sometimes even the 20", because the older
>they are, the more they need a big and good screen.

Definitely, and it's not just for the "older". Everyone's eyes start
declining around age 40. First it's the hardening of the lens, resulting in
diminished focal accommodation -- and by age 55, essentially none. This
creates a need for mid-distance glasses for computer use, since a computer
screen is usually at a greater distance than a book -- other reading is
enabled by either single-vision reading glasses or the lower part of bifocals.

Some people will already have such glasses, depending on what they do --
musicians of various kinds especially. However, a great many people need an
additional set of glasses. If you see someone tipping their head back and
moving up close to see the monitor from the bottom of their bifocals, tell
them to get some mid-distance glasses, either single-vision or (better but
more expensive) bifocal with reading distance in the bottom. Reading a
computer screen through the bottom part of bifocals at book-reading
distance is very uncomfortable, but many people won't realize there's a
better way.

At later ages, cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic
retinopathy can cause visual deficits. These are general deficits, not
specific to computer use. However, it just reinforces the need for easily
read screens.

>The Web is often a *huge* hurdle for older people. First of all simply
>because every Web page site completely different, second because most Web
>sites are designed by people who are clueless about usability.

The very concept of the web is hard for some. I think that my own father --
a PhD chemist and physicist and textbook author, who wrote his first
computer program circa 1963 -- never quite comprehended how what he saw was
coming from other parts of the world, even though he understood a lot about
the inner workings of the local computer. Millions of people talk about
what they have on "my computer" in referring to web sites. Exactly when
it's worth trying to straighten this out and when not, I don't know.

As for double-clicking ... well, the original Mac design team had a decent
idea, single click to select, double click to open. Unfortunately the
distinction is almost totally lost today. Web links and paned mail programs
have probably done the most to confuse the poor users, though the
ever-expanding application space has introduced concepts where the "open or
select" dichotomy isn't clear. And this has almost nothing to do with age,
just with being a computer novice and/or not particularly interested in the
technical details, especially when the technical details have so little
meaning attached. My wife (52) has as much trouble with single/double
clicks as my mom (77). It's almost feasible to configure a system (Mac or
PC) with no double-clicks required at all, but not clear that it's worth
the effort at present -- if you set up a system with no double-clicks
needed, then someone will tell the user they have to double-click on
something, and the confusion returns.

Edward

Some simple things from a training perspective:

Older people tend to be less able with fluid tasks; new things that
require quick thinking are substantially more difficult for someone
over 60 than they are for a 20 year old. (Actually, the decline begins
in your mid-20s and continues from there unabated.) A good way to work
around this is to tie everything in to something they understand and
already feel confident about. Go slowly, too. I click with what appears
to be blinding speed on menus that my students haven't even READ yet.
It's because I'm practiced at this, I do it a million times a day.
Throttle down your training speed when you're demoing, and never seem
impatient.

Similarly, keep things oriented in the framework of what benefits they
will gain from their newfound computer expertise. Don't say, "Here's
the Finder, it's a hierarchical view of all of the files and programs
on your computer's hard drive." Instead keep things relevant to what
they're doing: "Remember how we talked about your ability to save files
so that you can get back to them later? The Finder is one of the two
ways to access the files you save. It's also used to open programs:
like your crossword puzzle program, or your web browser."

This is not to say that you should keep the user totally task-focused.
Giving them some background (in small doses, and again, tie them into
familiar metaphors) will give them the tools they need to solve their
own problems. But nobody wants to learn something irrelevant to them.

Also, reduce the scope of what you're teaching at first. Gradually
build their body of knowledge. Starting with a web browser is an
obvious option, although if they're a TOTAL novice, I'd probably shoot
for the word processor. Again, it depends on what they want to do.

As they gain proficiency with that one program, they can readily apply
that knowledge to new programs.

E.G. My Dad just wanted to get his NY Times X-Word puzzle, and I helped
him do that and that's what he used the computer for for quite a while.
Then he branched out to more web browsing and continues to learn more
tasks he can complete with his Mac.

Lastly, reduce FEAR. When learning new things, a person's greatest fear
is looking/feeling stupid. DO NOT LET THEM FEEL DUMB JUST BECAUSE THEY
HAVEN'T EVER USED A COMPUTER! Instead give them small tasks and lessons
that give them immediate satisfaction, because this will increase their
confidence. A confident student is an eager and capable student. So do
as much set up as you have to before you sit down with them so that
right off the bat they can do the ONE TASK that they REALLY want to do.

For my Dad, we went and downloaded a crossword puzzle and solved it
together. The computer part was pretty straightforward because I'd
already downloaded Across Lite (and made sure it worked), I'd
subscribed to and logged into NYTimes.com in advance, and I'd set up an
appropriate bookmark from the very start. All the lesson consisted of
was: Click on Safari, click on the NY Times bookmark, click on the
crossword puzzles link, wait for it to download, and now let's solve
the puzzle!

He had fun, I had fun, and although he didn't think of it in those
terms, he'd just opened a program, navigated the web, downloaded and
saved a file, and opened it up in a second application. Not bad at all
for a newbie. His reward was the pleasure of solving a crossword puzzle
with his son. You've got to bet that he appreciated how easy and
non-threatening it was.

All of these tips work just as well for young people as for old people,
but young people have more forgiving brains. (Generally speaking, I'm
no ageist, this is just based on some psychological research I recently
did.)

 From a technical perspective:

When I got my parents set up with an OS X iMac, I set up their dock
very carefully with the applications they need. I also set them up with
a normal user account so that they wouldn't have to THINK about whether
they were damaging the computer when they did something. (If they were
total novices, I'd really consider starting with the simple Finder or
even the panes view to begin with and then add complexity each time I
visited.)

I also COVERED their desktop with stickies, each one explaining what
was where. There was a sticky under the Apple menu explaining that Shut
Down and stuff were there. There was a sticky over the Dock explaining
what each application was and what it should be used for. I also
included some basic stickies on the desktop explaining some basics,
like how to connect to the internet and such.

Now they're running without stickies, but for the first month of
transition, they found them extremely helpful. Plus everything I taught
them was already on a sticky, so they didn't have to take notes while I
talked. They could pay attention and be sure that there were helpful
reminders all over the place.

You may want to go with web-based email. This has two advantages: 1) No
applications, so they don't learn a new paradigm just for emailing.
Instead they have a killer app which forces them to use a web browser
and familiarizes them with Safari. 2) Remote access: you can get into
their email account and fix things/adjust spam controls/whatever if you
need to. Even if they are using an email client, I'd recommend setting
up an email service that also has a web view for the same reasons.
(Again, I have to plug Fastmail.fm for being incredibly easy to set up
server-side and to use client-side via either the web or a client.)

A technical tip on reducing fear: Be sure to give them an EASY way to
back up their files and back them up in advance. .Mac Backup is awesome
for this because it takes NO INTERACTION AT ALL. It just goes to the
web. If they know that their data is 100% safe all the time, and you
prove this to them, they'll be far less afraid of making mistakes.
(.Mac does NOT do archives, which leaves some risk open, so having
another system for that isn't a terrible idea.)

This email's already too long, but I hope this helps. I've been
training folks for a few years so I've tested these techniques. They
work.

--Nik

Two comments:

1. I agree on the Gmail suggestion. And remember, Gmail has POP access, so you can use it with Mail.app. You get the best of both worlds.

2. Timbuktu or VNC (or Apple Remote Desktop) is a must-have.



Paul Schreiber shrubmac.com

On Friday, April 1, 2005, at 10:54 AM, Charlton Wilbur wrote:

>
> I'd also advise: instead of using their ISP's email account, set up
> something that can be more easily replaced, possibly something with
> good spam detection. (Email me offlist if you want a GMail invite; I
> have something like 50 of them to hand out.) My mother went nuts with
> email newsletters of all sorts when she first got online, and now she
> gets over 300 spam email messages a day.
>

This is a great suggestion, and it might also be a good idea to let the
new computer user know about spam defensive measures - like never
posting your address on a public forums (including bulletin boards,
reviews on Amazon), making sure you uncheck any prechecked "include me
on you mailing lists" when forms are submitted, etc. And let them know
they can set up more than one gmail account.

Marilyn

> > 1. Sign up for her, a gmail account.
>
> While Gmail is good, for webmail, I still think using a real
> application is better for most people, including novices, and
> Mail.app is a very good mail app.

Using gmail (or something like it) but using the POP3 access to work within
a 'real' application is the best solution here, IMO. You get an email
address not tied to an ISP, easy progression to remote access to email
(those long trips to visit grandchildren, etc), and you're still in a
regular email client.

Assuming that the elderly person trusts you, and you're not someone that
will misuse it, if you set it up so that you know their username/password,
then you can access all their mail, too, which can be handy (finding mail
that gets accidentally deleted, any spam false positives, etc).

=Tony.Meyer

As nice as Gmail is, it's still beta, and it's a very strange program
that breaks many normal paradigms (for web or for desktop apps). For a
total novice, something less powerful and simpler might be better. I've
mentioned Fastmail.fm before, and Yahoo has an excellent web mail
client that's quite easy to understand.

Also, think about the benefits of IMAP: Especially if you are able to
share the login/password with your novice computer user friend, you
then have access to all their email. When they lose a message, you can
search for it.

Backup is also effectively taken care of for you since all the messages
sync up on the server.

My parents have a Fastmail.fm account, and it's a pleasure to be able
to define their rules for them (server-side, they don't have ANY rules
set up in their mail client), adjust their spam filtering, and even
take care of grabbing email from other accounts (such as their
Qwest.com account which occasionally contains important information
about their DSL line).

One last plug for Fastmail: Fastmail.fm has great virus and spam
protection. Both a must for a novice, and it's great to have these
services handled by the service provider instead of messing with
Norton. My folks just don't SEE the bad messages, and that's how they
prefer it.

--Nik

On 4/4/2005 9:42, "Edward Reid" <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

> If you see someone tipping their head back and
> moving up close to see the monitor from the bottom of their bifocals, tell
> them to get some mid-distance glasses, either single-vision or (better but
> more expensive) bifocal with reading distance in the bottom. Reading a
> computer screen through the bottom part of bifocals at book-reading
> distance is very uncomfortable, but many people won't realize there's a
> better way.

My neck almost immediately felt a lot better when I got the computer
glasses. I tried the experiment of getting a little bit of the yellow
tinting used in shooting glasses, and that seems desirable with CRTs...it
doesn't seem as important with LCD.

[Earlier in life, it was trying to do nautical chart work under red lighting
that triggered my first bifocals. Somewhat oddly, I did not kill myself
tripping over things on deck with them on. Before bifocals, I had to take
the glasses off to do chart work.]

  --John

On or about 4/4/05 9:55 AM, thus spake "Nik" <gerberinik.net>:

> This email's already too long, but I hope this helps

I thought this was a brilliant letter. Everything you said was spot on, and
exactly mirrored my own experience; it was what I'd have said if I'd had
time, but in any case you expressed it better. m.

--
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pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571/somethingsbymatt
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For help on this question, I emailed my grandmother, who is a senior
and a Mac user, if she had any tips she'd like to pass on. She
forwarded my email to her Mac club leaders (her senior community has
their own Mac club) and so far, my grandmother has just seconded that a
Mac would be the best, and said to get a book. She's evaluated the
current stock of books and she finds the Missing Manual to be too
technical, although the Mac club leader likes it. The Mac club leader
didn't like the For Dummies book and gave it to her. She passed it on
to one of her neighbors, who finds it the best one of the batch, while
she prefers the "Visual Quickstart" guide.
One of the club leaders has also replied, just adding (as we've said)
to try to seek out a local user group, and to see if they would offer
personal instruction. As well, he'd recommend a 'trial' run (if a
person can be found), where your computer novice could try out the
other's computer before she gets her own.

That's all so far--I'll make sure to pass on any updates.

macmaxbh

On Apr 4, 2005, at 11:42 AM, Edward Reid wrote:

> Definitely, and it's not just for the "older". Everyone's eyes start
> declining around age 40. First it's the hardening of the lens,
> resulting in
> diminished focal accommodation -- and by age 55, essentially none. This
> creates a need for mid-distance glasses for computer use, since a
> computer
> screen is usually at a greater distance than a book -- other reading is
> enabled by either single-vision reading glasses or the lower part of
> bifocals.

I can second this. I'm 47 (I don't consider myself elderly, yet), and
just got bifocals two or three years ago. Thank goodness for the iMac
G4 with the flat-panel adjustable display. My wife needs to adjust the
screen up to read it, and I need to pull it down to read it through my
bifocals. I'm considering getting a new pair of glasses just for
reading my screen and the music on a piano keyboard (the mid-distance
to which Edward refers). It has gotten to the point where tipping my
head back and reading my screen or music through my bottom lens on my
glasses is hurting my neck.

-Ray Still

On 5 Apr 2005, at 05:58 :42, Nik wrote:
> As nice as Gmail is, it's still beta, and it's a very strange program
> that breaks many normal paradigms (for web or for desktop apps).

This means nothign to a novice who is not entrenched in those 'normal
paradigms'

Gmail is clean and simple to just use. It is far more straight-
forward than Yahoo's mail, or Hotmail, or even Squirrelmail.

> Also, think about the benefits of IMAP: E

[..]

> Backup is also effectively taken care of for you since all the
> messages
> sync up on the server.

IMAP is not a backup solution, if someone accidently deletes their
inbox, this changed is, guess what? Synched to the server. Poof,
inbox is gone.

> One last plug for Fastmail: Fastmail.fm has great virus and spam
> protection. Both a must for a novice, and it's great to have these
> services handled by the service provider instead of messing with
> Norton. My folks just don't SEE the bad messages, and that's how they
> prefer it.

gmail's spam filter is very good. better than Apple's Junk Mail
filter, for example. I don't know about Viruses because I simply
don't care about Viruses.

I don't have anything Against fastmail.fm, I've never used it, but it
looks like a reasonable service. However, gmail is free and gives
you far more than fastmail gives you at $20/year, much less
fastmail's free service which includes spam-tags in every mail you send.

The advantages to gmail, and the reason I use it even though i have
my own mailserver, is the searching ability and the speed of those
searches. Maybe 10.4 will help close that gap, but right now it is
far faster for my to switch from Mail.app tp a web browser, login to
gmail, and do my search than it is to simply wait while mail.app does
the search.

--
One by one the bulbs burned out, like long lives come to their
expected ends.

On 4/4/2005 9:42, "Edward Reid" <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

> If you see someone tipping their head back and
> moving up close to see the monitor from the bottom of their bifocals, tell
> them to get some mid-distance glasses, either single-vision or (better but
> more expensive) bifocal with reading distance in the bottom. Reading a
> computer screen through the bottom part of bifocals at book-reading
> distance is very uncomfortable, but many people won't realize there's a
> better way.

My neck almost immediately felt a lot better when I got the computer
glasses. I tried the experiment of getting a little bit of the yellow
tinting used in shooting glasses, and that seems desirable with CRTs...it
doesn't seem as important with LCD.

[Earlier in life, it was trying to do nautical chart work under red lighting
that triggered my first bifocals. Somewhat oddly, I did not kill myself
tripping over things on deck with them on. Before bifocals, I had to take
the glasses off to do chart work.]

--

Some people in this thread suggested this wasn't necessarily an age
thing, but I don't think this point can be over stated. I really think
it's an individual issue, not than a question of being elderly. Yes,
for an individual it's probably better to acquire certain knowledge at
a younger age, but you can't lump whole populations in a given field.

I got my first pc (a mac) when I was 40+, I taught myself with the help
of books and tidbits and whatnot, and I was 50+ when I'd worked in
computer graphics in a department with some 40 other mac users. I was
probably the oldest person there and I'm pretty sure that I knew the
stuff better than just about all of them with the exception of the tech
support guys. Many who were in their 20s and 30s could manage their
particular applications but had no idea about anything else -- systems,
hardware, whatever -- couldn't troubleshoot to save their lives. I've
helped a lot of people, so I could tell how their heads worked. Once,
someone whose monitor had failed asked me if I could save her data for
her -- she thought that her jerky desktop meant that it was all going
to hell. Speaking of being task oriented...

Yes, for myself as an individual, I realize that I would have been
better at it had I started as a teenager, or even taken computer
science in school -- nevertheless, I can still outrun many younger
people out there. My biggest problem is probably with stereotypes, when
seeking work with computers and looking the way I do ;-)

At 06:51 AM 04/08/2005 -0700, Paul N. Schatz wrote:
>Another solution that can work extremely well is trifocals. It is then
>possible to lean back comfortably in one's chair. The trifocal middle
>lens covers enough of the screen that one can read very comfortably.

Can work for some. You don't see many trifocals around though. I tried
classic trifocals (the kind Paul describes) and disliked them; the middle
part was not large enough, and enlarging would have made one of the other
parts too small. (I also find that a very small reading area is only useful
for reading a few sentences. Holding my eyes in a downward direction for
minutes at a time is fatiguing.) And though one line between lenses doesn't
bother me much, two lines was too much.

I also tried progressives. The first ones, when I was about 43, worked
well. But the next set needed a much greater difference between distance
and reading, and they were a disaster the moment I sat down at the
computer. The middle distance only worked in an area about three inches in
diameter at screen distance. I had to live with it for a couple of days
until I could get my first pair of computer glasses. I still have those
progressives -- I call them my shopping glasses, because when you think
about it, shopping is an activity which requires considerable use of vision
at all distances. Even for that I've mostly set them aside, as I don't like
the way the lower corners don't focus at any distance.

All this came as no surprise to me. My father played the piano and the
organ, and I was still living at home when he got his first pair of
piano/organ glasses.

Edward

Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

This is a digest of messages posted to: TidBITS Talk.

---

 14. Re: Introducing and elderly computer novice to Macintosh

Message #33: Re: Introducing and elderly computer novice to Macintosh
Posted by: edward Date: Apr 8, 2005.

At 06:51 AM 04/08/2005 -0700, Paul N. Schatz wrote:
>Another solution that can work extremely well is trifocals. It is then
>possible to lean back comfortably in one's chair. The trifocal middle
>lens covers enough of the screen that one can read very comfortably.

Can work for some. You don't see many trifocals around though. I tried
classic trifocals (the kind Paul describes) and disliked them; the middle
part was not large enough, and enlarging would have made one of the other
parts too small. (I also find that a very small reading area is only useful
for reading a few sentences. Holding my eyes in a downward direction for
minutes at a time is fatiguing.) And though one line between lenses doesn't

bother me much, two lines was too much.

<x-sigsep>

--  

</x-sigsep>

At 04:11 PM 04/09/2005 -0400, Paul N. Schatz wrote:

I don't understand the optics described below. Viewing a 21 inch CRT from a distance of about 20 inches, the middle lens of my conventional trifocals encompass the entire horizontal width of the monitor and about 35% of the vertical dimension. Reading is extremely comfortable.

Most people who spend much time at the screen don't like bobbing their head up and down the see the entire vertical range of the monitor. I would not consider glasses even marginally adequate if I could not read the entire screen with my head in one position. If you only use it a few minutes at a time, bobbing may be acceptable as an alternative to changing glasses. And undoubtedly a few people tolerate it better than most.

The fact that you don't see many conventional trifocals around indicates that few people find them as satisfactory as other methods.

If you're really bothered by changing glasses, conventional trifocals are worth a try. Definitely better than progressives for computer screens. Paul tried them and liked them; I tried them and didn't. You're out around US$100 if you don't like them (more if you don't use frames you already have. possibly less at discount opticians). I still recommend separate glasses unless you just don't tolerate changing them.

[I wore glasses with cable temples for nearly 40 years. Finally gave up and went with normal straight temples when I had to start changing often.]

Edward Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 11 Apr, 2005, at 07:54 am, Paul N. Schatz wrote:

> I don't understand the optics described below.  Viewing a 21 inch CRT
> from a distance of about 20 inches, the middle lens of my conventional
> trifocals encompass the entire horizontal width of the monitor and
> about 35% of the vertical dimension.  Reading is extremely
> comfortable.

Trifocals are a good lens for people using the computer, but they only
really work for people who are used to wearing lined bifocals, which is
a smaller and smaller segment of the market each year. Also as screens
get bigger the amount of viewable area in a trifocal tends not to be
enough for most people. At my optical dispensary almost everybody is
now getting progressive (no line) multifocals. These lens have
improved tremendously over the last decade, they now have wide reading
areas, and reasonable intermediate areas for computer work - they are
also a lot easier to get used to then they used to be. There are
specialty lenses that are designed for computer/deskwork that work for
a lot of people, and more and more people are getting separate glasses
for the office now. The idea of one pair of glasses meeting all our
needs is slowly fading away, computers have a lot to do with this they
are at an awkward distance for our eyes (even young eyes). I would not
recommend progressive lenses to somebody who is happy with trifocals or
bifocals, but those lenses are going the way of the LP or tape (or
maybe even the CD) for music. To make computer viewing with glasses
easier I would also recommend people look at getting anti-reflective
coating to reduce the glare on their lenses from light coming of the
screen - this is especially true for brighter LCD displays which are
much easier on older eyes then CRT displays.

============================================
James (jamesemamac.com)
Vancouver BC Canada
http://homepage.mac.com/jamesema

As followup to Paul Schatz' comment, remember that reading a magazine or
newspaper is usually linear -- just moving gradually down the page, not
much jumping around. By contrast, much reading on a computer involves
jumping around the screen. For someone who uses the computer mostly for
linear reading, trifocals would probably be more acceptable.

Edward
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org