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Re: Cultivate curiosity as part of information design (Was: A trip to IKEA)
Subject:Re: Cultivate curiosity as part of information design (Was: A trip to IKEA) From:Ben Kovitz <bkovitz -at- nethere -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 23 Apr 2002 08:41:36 -0700
Ann Hastings wrote:
> I got to listen to Michael Bremer, author of "The User Manual Manual" and
> "UnTechnical Writing" a couple of weeks ago, and that's one point he made
> too, obliquely. He said he plants cartoons or jokes or tidbits of
> fascinating trivia (somehow related to the subject at hand) throughout
> his manuals, to get reluctant users to flip through them just to read the
> sidebars. In their voyage, they might notice some headings, and later
> when they needed that info, they would remember that the info was in the
> manual.
Wow, some big-name folks are into it, too! It's definitely a new
thing to add to my tech-writing tool belt. The funny thing is that I
only thought of it while writing the message Sunday night. I was
trying to remember details to make people want to visit IKEA as
tech-writing research. That silly "Red" magazine kept popping into my
head and I kept dismissing it as irrelevant.
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