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Subject:RE: What is our art? From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Feb 2002 10:47:05 -0800 (PST)
> > > I tell people I'm the "idiot's advocate". I explain things
> > > to the idiot that the smart people already know. I used
> > > this just yesterday.
> >
> > While this is amusing and makes a good sound bite, I'm not
> > a fan of this explanation. It has a nasty habit of becoming
> > the way you view your readers.
> >
> wrong impression of an audience, it is not an acurate description
> of all tech writing jobs....
Understand that my original comment was out of context. In the
discussion I had with the developer, we were discussing how something
on the GUI was not intuitive, and infact, subject to submit
incomplete or wrong information into a Siebel database, which then
upon audit, could create serious issues.
His position was that yes, it was not intuitive, but after they run
the application a few times, they'll remember the right way to do it.
Aside from the fact that this was a wrong premise and told him so,
upon which he asked "why do I care that much...just include the
explaination in the documentation", I told him that "I'm the idiot's
advocate" The idiot I had in mind was someone who doesn't learn after
running the application a few times, makes the same error over and
over, and that by changing the GUI, they wouldn't make the mistake
the first time.
Any clearer?
=====
John Posada, Senior Technical Writer
Current gig ending 4/15 mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com, 732-259-2874
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