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Comment on How to help someone use a computer

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I found this to be the most useful point:

Don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction.

While there are certainly times when something needs to be accomplished in a hurry (in which cases I interject, "mind if I drive for a minute?"), 95% of the time I defer to letting the user explore and find the appropriate solution.

More often then not they ask me to take over and "fix it". I refuse politely and encourage them to try for themselves, along with some guidance from me. I am happy to walk them through, but I've found that long term, just fixing the problem without teaching leads to a lifetime of being on call any time a user encounters even the slightest error.

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