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Jenise Cook reports some successful manual-free family experiments with
<<... an inexpensive digital camera... that poor manual continued to lay
untouched on the floor until my niece put it back into the box.>>
One of the key words in your introduction is "inexpensive", which usually
means "not as many features as the expensive version and thus easier to
learn to use by experimenting". Ideally, all products should be so simple to
use that nobody ever consults the manual, but that's doubly true for
inexpensive products that will be used mostly by nonexperts; experts
typically buy more complicated products that have more features and who are
less likely to succeed simply by pressing buttons to see what happens.
<<Is that what our jobs are all about, writing manuals that many users do
not read?>>
Alas, that's often the case. I recall reading (somewhere reputable...
perhaps one of Bill Horton's books?) that most people prefer to start by
experimenting with a product to see if they can figure out how it works.
This may seem faster than searching through an often poorly indexed and
intimidating manual; I also suspect that most of us want to at least try to
figure out how something works before giving up, admitting our incompetence,
and asking for help. Asking for help is the second step most people take,
and indeed, that's exactly what your anecdote revealed. The manual is often
a distant third choice, but for those who need it, it's invaluable. Even
those who don't need manuals consider them akin to the training wheels on a
bicycle: they're present when you need them, and eventually you may dispense
with them entirely, but in the meantime, the mere fact of their existence is
reassuring. The latter aspect is vitally important for the large number of
technophobes I've met over the years: my experience has been that the mere
presence of a manual alleviates their anxiety to the point that they're at
least willing to try the product, and that the absence of the manual
inspires a measure of fear.
<<I decided that no matter how the users out there may or may not use the
documentation we write, some
users definitely will. Those are the users I write for, and think of during
the planning phase.>>
And that's the right way to think. Particularly so in an age where (as a
friend recently pointed out) the people who produce Butterball turkeys run
an 800-number hotline to provide answers such as "yes, you really do need to
rotate that large dial with numbers up to 500 on it if you want to turn on
the oven and cook your turkey".
"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
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