RE: Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Subject: RE: Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness
From: "Paul Goble" <pg -at- pgcommunication -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:42:22 -0600


A few days ago, Kevin wrote:

> The example of the tag from the "Kickers" shoes may be unexplained,
> but it's explainable. The panels down the left side indicate what
> portion of the shoe is being considered. ...
> I have no *clue* what the diamond represents,

I just found a key to these symbols at:
http://www.freemans.com/mfic238/main/help09.asp
There's also an EU standard (EN345) with its own set of
equally opaque symbols.

So it looks like an *entire industry* has decided to use a set of
symbols which are incomprehensible to their customers. It would
be fascinating to find out why they believed symbols would be better
than words. Maybe customers aren't their real audience: maybe
they just need to meet the letter of some regulation, while
minimizing localization costs. Or maybe they just declared that
customers "will" learn the symbols (as was the case with fabric
care symbols).

Paul

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