It would seem from our reading that the trick to teaching an elderly person about facebook is to relate the technology to something both familiar and important to them. For the sake of this writing, we assume that the elderly have knowledge and are proficient in the use of e-mail. Then nothing more than semantics is needed to relate facebook messaging to e-mailing.
With regards to other aspects of facebook, the best way to explain the features would presumably be to put them in a context the elderly is easily able to interpret. To do this, describe facebook as a place, like a room. Then explain that, for instance, friending is allowing someone into your room. In your room they can play with your stuff (write on your wall) or go through your photo-albums (identically in facebook). In this way all actions are analagous to some activity in the real world
Facebook is a particularly easy case (compared to other networking/web2.0 sites) becaue it was designed to faciliate meeting in the real world, although to what extent it is primarily used on this day I'm not sure. Etherway, the designers of facebook surely considered this when framing their product, and the return on our investment seems to be positive, although not as positive as Mark Zuckerburg's
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This seems a little on the short side. You seem to repeatedly describe the problem, without providing much solution content. I do like the analogy of their entering a room and being able to access content in your room. That seems like a great way to explain this to adults, although I think that coupling it with a technology framework might be more prudent. I think that you should go from technological frame to technological frame rather than from technological frame to real world frame.
ReplyDeleteI feel that by placing your intended audience in the super-stratified category of the elderly you are greatly over simplifying the problem. Age 40 is by no means elderly and though 60 is getting much closer to that stage of life there are 60 year olds who lead active and energetic lives. There is another large over-simplification when you boil down your problem to a matter of semantics. If it were that simple and the technologies were that similar than it would be very difficult to sell anyone on the idea that learning to use facebook is going to provide a relevant return on their investment.
ReplyDeleteI like the room analagy, as the person takes a tour of the house they can uncover certain items such as pictures, personal information, other people with related interests, birthdays, events, etc. This would definitely make it easier for the older generation to understand.
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