Re: Great piece on marketing collateral

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

bounce-techwr-l-106467 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com wrote on 04/30/2004 12:45:26 PM:
> Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> >if your experience is that people aren't reading the 
> >documentation they're being provided, what 
> >is the alternate strategy to support your product's
> > information needs?

Dick Margulis Responded:
> I think there is a limit to what we can get other people to do. 
...
> But can I bribe them to follow a four-step procedure once a year to
> update their PowerPoint templates? No.
...
> I think it is a lot of fun to create attractive, well 
> organized, well written documents that are focused on what needs to be 
> communicated to the intended audience. I don't ever expect that anyone 
> will read them, though, and I'm always delighted when someone does. The 
> world is full of people who manage to get their jobs done--maybe not as 
> efficiently as possible--without ever resorting to RTFM. 

But I think all that still ignores the point of the original article and 
the point Gene is trying to make. The point is not to force the user (or 
the buyer in the article) to read all the documentation. The point is to 
re-evaluate who the audience for each type of material is, what materials 
are required, and where in the process the materials are best provided.

In the marketing example, it would seem that the majority of the material 
is not pertinent to the audience (the buyer) and much of the material that 
is pertinent to the process is directed at the wrong audience (best 
provided to the sales force not the potential buyers).

In the case of technical documentation, is the user the correct target for 
the information if a majority won't RTFM?

Perhaps the audience/target of the information is instead the tech support 
group. Perhaps the users are disinterested in the manuals due to 
irrelevant material. Perhaps the manuals need to be more modular. Or, 
delivering the manuals once and then expecting users to remember to use 
them for rarely performed functions is inadequate. In the case of annual 
powerpoint template updates, perhaps the process could be automated with 
an installer? Perhaps the instructions should be included in the 
notification given when the templates are updated. Perhaps the enforcement 
of the standards has to be tightened to lend the correct level of 
importance to the task of completing the update.

In any case, effort to organise, design, and deliver information is wasted 
and a very poor expenditure of resources if it goes unused. Simply 
delivering the information (no matter how well targeted or appropriate) 
does not equate to communicating the information nor does it necessarily 
equate into effective user support.

Two things in Dick's post really bothered me:

> I don't accept responsibility for what they do or don't read. 
> Life's too short.

 
> it's not my job to tell other people what choices to make. 
> Even if all they have to do is click a button on the interface.

If the users don't read what you produce and they won't make the correct 
choices based on your instruction/information set you've failed completely 
as a technical communicator. If tech support has to field all the calls 
for information that is found in the manuals, why bother printing and 
delivering them? If sufficient numbers of users are not directed and aided 
by the information delivered by techpubs, the department is useless to the 
company and should rightly be disbanded.

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer

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