Looking for online games to teach older adults GUI abstraction...
January 10, 2015 10:07 AM Subscribe
Please offer your suggestions for online games with abstract GUI features which might be helpful to teach Operating System GUIs to older adults.
I'm asking for your suggestions of simple online games which I might relate to some of the more difficult tasks related to teaching older adults how to use computers. From suggestions I've gathered in web search, both online games and simple word processing are very effective. For example, I remembered a simple game here at Metafilter called Cursors. It's not at all addictive nor childish in its interface. It's just a simple maze which requires some mouse dexterity.
But here's where I get stuck. The abstraction of on screen graphics used for any number of effects and outcomes is difficult to explain, because it's a meta-topic requiring abstraction logic itself. For example, explaining how Windows uses the arrow at the login screen as "Enter", while Firefox uses the arrow as "Backwards in History" is difficult. I don't want them to feel I'm talking down to them when I mistakenly explain something the already know, which is the added difficulty for determining someone's baseline computer knowledge.
The alternative to perscriptive instruction is to let them learn by play. Then I can observe their activity. The theory being we can disassociate the learning about GUIs from any one application by playing an obviously trivial game.
Of course, I'm open to other suggestions, games or otherwise.
I'm asking for your suggestions of simple online games which I might relate to some of the more difficult tasks related to teaching older adults how to use computers. From suggestions I've gathered in web search, both online games and simple word processing are very effective. For example, I remembered a simple game here at Metafilter called Cursors. It's not at all addictive nor childish in its interface. It's just a simple maze which requires some mouse dexterity.
But here's where I get stuck. The abstraction of on screen graphics used for any number of effects and outcomes is difficult to explain, because it's a meta-topic requiring abstraction logic itself. For example, explaining how Windows uses the arrow at the login screen as "Enter", while Firefox uses the arrow as "Backwards in History" is difficult. I don't want them to feel I'm talking down to them when I mistakenly explain something the already know, which is the added difficulty for determining someone's baseline computer knowledge.
The alternative to perscriptive instruction is to let them learn by play. Then I can observe their activity. The theory being we can disassociate the learning about GUIs from any one application by playing an obviously trivial game.
Of course, I'm open to other suggestions, games or otherwise.
Response by poster: Cheers for your answer.
First, any suggestions are welcome and worth investigation on my part, because I'm sure to be asked for suggestions. The Curse of Monkey Island looks really entertaining. I see what you mean by the cursor, and there's some coin UI element I found in this youtube runthrough.
More specifically to my current context, I'm dealing with public computers (like at the library) and a limited amount of time to work with someone. I can't load software.
If I could load the software on a laptop--as a proxy for judging a person's disposition to think in terms of context--a full desktop game would be difficult to work into a lesson, because the entertainment dimension is just too fun. haha.
posted by xtian at 4:02 PM on January 10, 2015
First, any suggestions are welcome and worth investigation on my part, because I'm sure to be asked for suggestions. The Curse of Monkey Island looks really entertaining. I see what you mean by the cursor, and there's some coin UI element I found in this youtube runthrough.
More specifically to my current context, I'm dealing with public computers (like at the library) and a limited amount of time to work with someone. I can't load software.
If I could load the software on a laptop--as a proxy for judging a person's disposition to think in terms of context--a full desktop game would be difficult to work into a lesson, because the entertainment dimension is just too fun. haha.
posted by xtian at 4:02 PM on January 10, 2015
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I say this because what immediately jumped to mind is the venerable but excellent Lucas arts point n' click The Curse Of Monkey Island.
It should be fairly available one way or the other and is playable on multiple platforms (with some fiddling) using the scummvm emulator system.
The game uses a system to interact with the world where holding down the mouse button causes the cursor to change into a wheel with a few options (off the top of my head: a hand, a mouth and, um, a couple of other things) Those options can be abstracted to a number of actions. For example, the "mouth" option might mean "talk to this person" or it might mean "eaeat this thing".
That's obviously a long way from traditional GUI usage, but I'm thinking it may be useful in showing how a single icon can mean various things, which must be understood based on context.
What a fascinating question.
posted by Dext at 11:46 AM on January 10, 2015