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Subject:Re: These users have us stumped! From:kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 Oct 2002 12:00:20 -0600
John asks:
>Does anyone have any experience or ideas about writing a
>non-technical user's guide for the totally clueless?
Yes. It's challenging, and particularly hard to get highly technical tech writers to think at that level. But it's great that your company did this usability testing - you've got some extremely valuable insights into your users. Take advantage of it.
The harsh reality is that a lot of "back-office" software is going to end up being used by CSRs and other low-income phone reps and such. It's likely in many cases that the user's native language will not be the one your GUI is written in, nor can you count on skilled and experienced computer users.
Perhaps an additional training doc will help, one that lists the basic Windows skills they need. Or maybe this could be written as a modular section that could be inserted into a variety of your docs, so you could (gasp) single source it!
It's a tough situation, but you're way ahead of the game by having all that valuable user input. I've never been fortunate enough to get that level of user feedback.
Keith Cronin
Tech writing naked is just not a good idea, unless maybe you're telecommuting.
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