[PLUG-TALK] Fighting the fear of computers

Paul Johnson baloo at ursine.ca
Thu Feb 10 00:24:53 UTC 2005


On Tuesday 08 February 2005 02:20 pm, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I set up a wiki for a local medical society my wife belongs to.  
> Wikis are ridiculously easy to use - probably much easier to
> figure out than a new-patient form at a doctor's office.  Last
> night, I had 15 minutes to show a room full of 20 doctors how to
> add text to a wiki.  Okay, so the venue was awful, we all were 
> tired, etc., but I failed in my mission.  Because every one of
> these doctors was CONVINCED that ANYTHING to do with computers
> was TOO HARD.  Even typing text into the text box of a wiki,
> hitting "PREVIEW" and then hitting "SAVE".  

Both Windows and bad commercial web design (MediaWiki isn't bad or 
commercial) have trained users that it can't possibly be that simple.  
It has to be hard, it has to break, and it has to cost a lot of time 
and money to fix.  You have to get past that barrier (good luck!).

I suggest taking two routes:  Find a good WYSIWYG Wiki editor compatible 
with the wiki you're using and demo that as well as just doing it by 
hand.  At least with Mediawiki, you have clicky buttons to add wiki 
elements to the source text.  The added complication of using a WYSIWYG 
editor will be more accustomed to the browbeating they're used to doing 
with computers.  Either that, or come up with a way to get around their 
stigma.  Try to relate to the doctors and use analogies (you may have 
to do some research for this one).

In either case, I bet a fresh audience instead of one that's been up and 
working all day would probably help as well.

> Meanwhile, I will just have to work with the folks at that meeting,
> one by one, until they see for themselves that wikis are a simple
> to use, non-threatening, and powerful way for them to make their
> own web pages.  That will be one small step towards empowering users,
> and fighting the fear of failure.  This mess wasn't made in a day,
> and it won't be cleaned up by one presentation, either.

No kidding.  If you have the werewithal for one-on-one tutoring, I 
highly recommend making yourself available.  That's my strategy for new 
users on my wiki; now it turns out with a little help (and offering to 
do all the heavy lifting uploading his photos), one user made a 
category for a photo album and is adding descriptions to them.  I 
suspect once he gets the hang of it there will probably be more pages.

If you're using a Mediawiki, you might want to check out 
http://ursine.ca/Creating_an_Article (and feel free to add your own 
suggestions).

-- 
Paul Johnson
baloo at ursine.ca
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-talk/attachments/20050209/0d5552cb/attachment.asc>


More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list