Re: saving trees (printing)

[Jenn Wilson <jenn -at- mylar -dot- outflux -dot- net>]

Hello, Bill!

I'll begin with a little background on my audience's perspective:  my 
company makes software for distribution companies, and many of our end 
users are considered "old-school," in that they're generally not very 
fluent with computers.  They usually prefer to take notes on paper, talk 
to people on the phone or in person, that sort of thing.  In other words, 
they're not terribly excited about learning new software to begin with, so 
one naturally wouldn't expect them to be enthused about electronic doc 
delivery at first.

Many years ago, our company issued a set of print manuals, written by a 
former trainer.  To make a long story short, they were expensive, poor in 
quality (super-confusing!), and impossible to maintain.  The company 
scrapped the whole idea of documentation, until they eventually decided to 
hire a professional full-time writer (me).  When I came on board, a lot of 
the clients remembered that there USED to be some manuals, so they eagerly 
anticipated new ones, in hard copy.

I don't issue docs in print, for various reasons.  Instead, I publish them 
in a password-protected support website.  The folks who actually log in to 
get documentation are often supervisors or managers; they look up answers 
or print materials for their lower-level employees.

Most of our clients are fine with this arrangement.  It lets them feel 
like they're in control -- they can log in and just print the page they 
need.  If they lose it, they can print it again.  The online docs are 
always up to date (at least in theory!), so there are no obsolete print 
manuals gathering dust.  I also publish announcements, reminders, and tips 
in the website, which helps the users feel all the more engaged and 
supported.

However, electronic doc delivery is a point of contention for some of 
them, at least at first.  A lot of our users learn best by reading 
instructions on paper and applying them onscreen, instead of bouncing 
between two application windows on a small monitor.  They can still learn 
from paper, of course, but someone has to take the extra step of printing 
the pages, which is a pain when they're already short on time.

Some new clients (usually smaller businesses that aren't big on IT to 
begin with) have told us that they feel cheated, in that they spend $X for 
software and don't even get a physical manual they can stick on a shelf, 
and when you buy a copy of MS Word at Best Buy, it always comes with a 
manual, no matter what, so why can't we be like everybody else?  :)

In almost all of these cases, though, once they get in and start using our 
support website, they really like it.  They like the search engine, they 
don't get papercuts, and they have easy access to other information about 
their accounts (trouble tickets, status on custom projects, etc.).

We do have plenty of end users who see going online (for any reason, not 
just for software info) as a chore... they simply lack the time or 
patience to log in and look for what they need, so some prefer to phone in 
and pay for helpdesk time instead.

One of our biggest challenges:  we can't really require anyone to use the 
website.  We strongly encourage them to use it, and most do, but some can 
(and do) get by without it.  If they feel they're doing just fine with the 
knowledge they already have (which erodes with turnover, lack of 
re-training, etc.), they miss out on learning new ways to use our software 
more efficiently.  It can also affect business development on our end, 
since there's less incentive toward upgrades.  (This is more a matter of 
how we do business than how we handle docs, but it's worth mentioning.)

Anyway, that's the gist of it.  In terms of differences between electronic 
delivery methods, I don't have much feedback to share there, beyond some 
users stating that they don't like to use all those keystrokes or mouse 
clicks (meaning more than one or two) to find the answer to a question. 
In other words, some of them want context-sensitive online help, but 
that's unfortunately not a possibility for us.


Jenn


On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Bill Swallow wrote: