Fresh

When I was down in Miami for a recent conference, I had the good fortune of staying a few extra days to visit my grandparents in Southern Florida. Despite being in their late eighties, my grandparents are full of life and still have their wits about them. And, after being married for almost 65 years, they’re still completely in love. They’re incessant bickering over the years is legendary, and is one of the most hilarious things to experience.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that my grandma pretty much runs the show. Upon my arrival I usually have a small list of chores to help them out with. On the list this year were the usual suspects: dusting light bulbs on the ladder, lifting heavy stuff, a lot of Windexing…and replace the computer!

While my grandfather is very much in the “I’m too old for that crap!” group, my grandma has always been interested in technology. A number of years ago she purchased a Dell desktop computer with a dial-up modem and a fresh 1995 version of CompuServe. Things have changed a little since then. The extent of her activity centered mostly around basic email and checking the weather. If I ever sent a picture by email my grandmother thought I was trying to give her a virus because the Internet was downloading something onto her machine. Needless to say, she wasn’t getting the full experience.

I saw this as an opportunity for a complete technology makeover. My goal for the day was to get her a laptop, high speed internet, a Gmail account (to replace her CompuServe membership), and a Facebook profile. Being a staunch Apple zealot, it took little effort on my part to set her up with a Macbook Pro (oddly the biggest selling point was the illuminated keys).

I was interested to see if Macs were truly as user-friendly as they claim, so when we got home I had my grandma go through the process of booting it up herself. After about 15 minutes and only a little bit of help, she was able to get online with her new wireless modem. With her wireless connection and new Gmail address at the ready, we had sent out a notification to all of her friends with the new email address, inviting them to join her on Facebook.

The best part of all of this by far was the instant gratification that came to her as people responded to her email and seeing people’s pictures on Facebook. It was an enlightening experience for her (her face literally lit up) to realize that so many of her family and friends were a part of this online community that she didn’t even know existed.

A few things I took away from this experience:

• Iconography is very effective in describing applications and the functions within them… especially over the phone.
• A trackpad can be difficult to use if you have never used one before. I had to adjust the preferences for her which would have been difficult to do on her own.
• The Gmail interface is busy and it’s hard to quickly begin using the application. My grandmother found it easier to view her mail through Mac Mail and was able to set this up very easily.
• It’s not obvious in most programs how to increase the text size for the visually impaired. This is something that is frequently buried too deep for many novice (or senior) users.
• A Macbook Pro is probably way more than my grandmother needs. Portability and the illuminated keyboard were the biggest selling points, but something like an iPad would be a better solution for her needs.
• I’m more confident now than ever that using established design patterns in interface design is crucial. Once my grandmother understood some basic principles, she was able to quickly translate them from program to program… functions such as close, submit, expand, save, trash were all easy to use once they became familiar.

Many young people have gradually grown up with the web, beginning with early bulletin boards, forums, gaming, blogs, and later social networks. As a result we have a distinct sensibility about how things generally work. As a newcomer I had to explain to my grandma all of the metaphors of the web, like what a ‘wall’ was, and why you would want to ‘post’ something on it. Or why it’s annoying to ‘poke’ someone. At the end of the day my grandma got a sweet set up and even had 19 friends on Facebook! She thought it was especially funny that she had to ask to be ‘friends’ with her own grandkids that she had been sending birthday checks to for so many years.

I had another take away from this whole experience: Anytime you make a technology recommendation to your grandparents you have voluntarily signed yourself up for 24/7 customer support. I’ve already had to tell her not to click on anything related to the mafia or farm animals.

Oh…I think that’s her calling right now. Gotta run.