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Sharon Burton wondered: <<I have gotten a client's training group to
agree to include a "demographics" form with the course evaluations.
This is a huge deal for this client, as it is the first step to
starting to find out about our documentation users.>>
Beware! Demographic information is very useful when it comes to
marketing, but much less useful when it comes to finding out what you
need to know about how people interact with your product. Purely
demographic information is descriptive, not prescriptive. If your goal
is to improve, you need prescriptive information.
<<I know about the basic demographic stuff like age, sex, education,
number of years on the job, that stuff.>>
The problem with all such measures is that they are at least one step
removed from what you really need to know to make your product more
usable. For example, does the fact that you're female and I'm male
change how we use documentation? Not generally. We both pick up the
book using one or two hands, turn to the index, scan to find a topic,
flip to the desired page(s), read the relevant part of the text, then
grab the mouse (or use a keyboard shortcut) and get to work. _These_
are the important factors.
<<Anyone have anything they have included on something like this that
turned out to generate really useful info?>>
The key to obtaining useful data is recognizing that the data must
provide a means of acting: noting that 52% of your audience is female
is generally irrelevant* because this information provides no basis on
which you can improve the product. Noting that 52% of your readers
refuse to use keyboard shortcuts, irrespective of their sex, is very
important; it means that your documentation must emphasize mouse use
(which will work for both keyboard nuts and refuseniks). Noting that
50% of your audience is older than 60 is irrelevant; recognizing that
50% of these older people have visual problems is.
* There are certainly cases where an audience's sex is important. For
example, ever wondered why the lines outside the women's washroom
during the intermission at a play are 10 times as long as the lines
outside the men's washroom? Because architects are oblivious to the
fact that women and men are "setters and pointers", respectively, and
thus, women inherently take longer in the bathroom on average. But do
they build three times as many stalls for women as they do for men?
Nope. Maybe they should read my article! <g>
--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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