Jared McAteer’s Blag – jaredmcateer.com

As an experience computer user for over a decade and a half I catch myself, often in retrospect, being unintentionally (usually) mean to the people I’m supporting. I’ve gotten to the point where I assume people should know the things I do regardless of the fact that it took me many years to get to where I am. I have no recollection of what it is like to be a beginner anymore when it comes to computers and electronics. As a result I have to remind myself of a few things when helping a novice.

After the jump, I will outline what I try to do to provide more effective IT support. I hope this can help others do the same.

Not everyone loves computers the way I do

To them it is simply a tool. They don’t know, and often don’t care, how it works, just that it does. I am not a mechanic, I don’t know how my car works (for the most part) and I don’t really care so long as it does. When I go to the mechanic and I tell them something is wrong, I don’t know exactly why it is making a noise and most likely my best guess is way off.

It is ok for them to be wrong

It is not ok for me to look down or make fun of them about being wrong. By acting superior or condescending they may be less encouraged to come to me with a problem or to learn how to properly fix it themselves. It also sews distrust and discord between me and my users. I do not want them mad at me, I want them to feel confident that I am there to help them.
Let them fix the problem

With your guidance. Give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll never go hungry again. Even if they are slow typers/readers it’s better to sit through with them one or two times around than to have to go back time and time again. By teaching a user how to fix one problem they may be more inclined to fix the problem themselves next time and even learn to deal with other similar problems.

Explain what I’m doing

Yea I look like a wizard when I hit a few keys, click on a couple icons and presto, I’ve fixed the problem. But the user doesn’t learn anything, this goes back to making them fix the problem, if I explain why I’m doing something they will more capable of handling the problem in the future themselves.

Most users don’t read error messages

Errors for the most part are not useful to them, often accompanied by alien looking hexadecimal exception codes and generic or cryptic messages they just don’t know what to make of them and eventually become colour blind to them. It’s the same way most people don’t notice ads/banners on webpages anymore (I do since I’ve become spoiled by Firefox+Adblock.) So what I need to do is have them unlearn this habit of ignoring errors. Write them down including what they were doing at the time (and preferable shortly before) the error occurred. It will take coaching and time for them to do this, but after the third or fourth time of fixing their problem promptly and effectively with the proper information up front they will learn that helping me helps them.

It’s not obvious

I may think something is obvious, but if they don’t, it’s not, simple as that. Many interfaces are clunky and unusable, I just don’t notice it because I’ve used it for so long that I’ve grown accustomed to it’s quirks. I like to start at a top level of abstraction and work my way down to get a feel for how comfortable they are with computers. If I tell them to something generic like “Remote into the X server.” and I get a blank stair, I’ll break it down to “Open Citrix/Remote Desktop Connection” if necessary “Click start. Click All programs. Click Accessories. Click Communications. Click Remote Desktop Connections” then “Type [X server] into the computer text field. Click Connect.” By starting at the top I hope to have them associate in the future the simple steps they took with the one generic instruction I give them. So next time I ask them to remote into X server they don’t need to be coached to click click click click type click, this of course could take a couple times.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 10:39 am and is filed under Blag, IT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.