A few weeks ago Irvin (not his real name) came into our computer recycling project. Irvin is 82 years old. He walks with a walker and somehow managed to lug a fairly big desktop Lenovo Thinkcentre down to our recycling project. Irvin had been to several computer stores over the past few months trying to get help with his computer. Unfortunately it seems that he wasn't able to get the help he needed despite paying repeatedly for help.
Irvin doesn't speak and didn't appear to understand much English, his native language is Russian. Initially one of our volunteers spent a couple of hours over two weeks trying to help Irvin with different issues he was running into. Irvin's computer was old, even by our refurbishing standards - it was running the Lenovo version of Windows XP. Many of the issues Irvin was running into were due to the fact that he was still running Windows XP.
Communication was our first issue, but Google Translate seemed to work well enough that we were able to communicate and figure out what his needs were. One of the things Irvin wanted to do was communicate with family and friends over Skype. Initially it seemed that the volunteer helping Irvin was able to get Skype working on Windows XP. Over a couple of weeks Irvin made a connection with the young volunteer and came in looking for him when he had questions.
But then something happened and Skype refused to log-in anymore. The volunteer who was working with Irvin hadn't showed up in a couple of weeks, so I decided to sit down with Irvin. During my sit-down I discovered that Irvin was an avid chess player and he enjoyed the odd sip of vodka while playing chess. Thanks to Google Translate we enjoyed some good laughs.
The problem with Skype for Windows XP was likely that the version just simply couldn't connect to the network. But even if it wasn't what was creating the problem there would be no new versions of Skype for XP. I'm sure that Irvin was encouraged to upgrade his hardware and software several times when he visited other stores, and this makes sense for most people, but I put myself in Irvin's place and thought "at 82 years old what he needed was something simple, not something current."
Linux tends to get a lot of flack for not being "user friendly," but in my experience as a refurbisher over the past 17 years this isn't actually the case. In Irvin's case his needs were very simple: communicate via the web, email, and Skype, and play Chess. While he could have gone out and bought a new computer, he'd have to learn Windows 10, and judging by the feedback we've got from some long-time Windows 7/Vista/XP users Windows 10 can take some getting used to (though we've customized it too for people). It would have meant Irvin had to go out and spend more money, after having spent a fair amount getting support from other places.
Xubuntu isn't the most polished looking distribution (the XFCE version of Linux Mint looks pretty good to us these days), but we've been installing and supporting it since we switched away from Ubuntu 10.04 (yes, the problem for us was Unity - it was just too bulky at the time for a lot of hardware we rebuilt). Customizing Xubuntu is pretty simple once you understand how to modify the panels.
But before I could install Xubuntu I needed to make sure Skype was going to work with Irvin's web cam and with his contacts, so we installed Skype on one of our shop machines and let Irvin try to log in - sure enough, up came his contacts. We grabbed his web cam, a generic cam we'd never seen before, and it worked too!
At this point I asked Irvin to come back the next day. We get pretty busy in the shop between repairs, donations, people coming in for a computer. Luckily the rest of the day was quiet enough that I was able to install Xubuntu 18.04 (the screenshot above is from my own home machine which runs 19.04, but it closely mirrors how I set up Irvin's system) and start adding applications. We install everything via network thanks to a PXE server set up by Paul Nijjar. Paul has added several images both 32bit and 64bit for the last several Xubuntu LTS versions.
Adding Russian as a language was a matter of going to the "Language Support" program in Xubuntu (just type language in the whisker menu) and clicking Install/Remove Languages. You can apply a language to be system-wide for the entire menu system, but we only wanted it so he could type in Russian into Google Translate. Irvin also wanted the option to type in English (to help him learn what the word might mean in Russian). To do this we clicked on the panel > add new items > keyboard layouts. This added a US flag that when clicked on turned into a Russian flag. When the Russian flag is active Irvin can type in Russian, when the U.S. flag is active Irvin can type in English.
The Ubuntu repositories had several graphical chess programs - I added several programs to give Irvin a choice between flashy graphics and complex options.
It's really important to test user responses and adjust accordingly. In this case I spent over 2 hours listening to Irvin and adjusting Xubuntu to better suit his particular needs. Even after listening I needed to sit with Irvin and watch him attempting to use Skype, Dream Chess, and Firefox. Minor adjustments like making Dream Chess default to full screen seem like a simple matter, but it's one of those things that makes the experience nicer for people like Irvin. The fact that he didn't need to figure it out on his own.
Irvin hugged me on the way out and tears were coming to his eyes. Expressing yourself in a different language is difficult enough when you don't know the language, add technology that's designed for the masses and it can be downright frustrating. Linux sometimes gets a bad rap for being difficult to use, but with a little bit of help even an 82 year old can appreciate Linux.
Comments
Post a Comment