Re: FWD: Self-explanatory installation

["Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com>]

At 6:38 AM -0800 1/17/2000, Anonymous Poster wrote:
>Our installation guides can run to 30/40 pages, with most pages
>containing just the graphic and one or two lines of text. I imagine this
>must be totally tedious for the user, and I doubt if it's of much use
>either. However, our managers don't want to do away with the
>Installation Guides altogether.

I'd say this is a job for....
  <cheesy echo effect>

      AUDIENCE ANALYSIS!!!


*Is* the current format useful to your audience? Do they use the
Installation Guide when they install the software? Do your users want to
change the socket number to something other than the default during
installation? Do they, by and large, know what a socket number is? Do they
know enough to *know* whether they should accept the default socket number?

Without having an answer to at least some of these questions, it'll be
difficult to figure out how to improve the guide. You might want to add
reference information, or add pointers to reference info elsewhere (if only
a few users need it), or remove the graphic as unnecessary, or do any of a
dozen other things to make the installation guide easier to use and more
informative. But you'll be shooting in the dark until you have a good idea
of what your users need in an installation guide.

--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com
http://www.jaedworks.com