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Just to clarify my previous post: I'm not proposing that we figure out how
to hijack users, but rather how to recognize and take advantage of "learned"
or "conditioned" responses in documentation. Perhaps to avoid a problem
(e.g., I've occasionally been hijacked when I pressed the Return key in a
dialogue box whose default behavior wasn't what I expected), or to improve
an interface (e.g., to guide the sequence of instructions or the order of
data fields).
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
