How to Help Someone Use a Computer

What I need to tell myself:
"Nobody is born knowing this stuff."

My one important rule:
"Be aware of how abstract your language is. "Get into the editor" is abstract and "press this key" is concrete. Don't say anything unless you intend for them to understand it. Keep adjusting your language downward towards concrete units until they start to get it, then slowly adjust back up towards greater abstraction so long as they're following you. When formulating a take-home lesson ("when it does this and that, you should try such-and-such"), check once again that you're using language of the right degree of abstraction for this user right now. "


Certain professors forget both of these statements and don't realize that we are often being thrown into these situations in a sink or swim sort of environment. These shouldn't come up as a problem in our presentation as there isn't much confusion associated with it as it's more of a database.