Re: Thinking like a user, or sticking to tried and true?

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

I've done some analysis in this area as well as development based on 
that analysis. In several startup companies we were faced with 
introducing new technology as one of the first companies into a new 
market space. As a result, no one knew anything about the application 
area let alone our application. Consider an analogy: in the 1930s the 
phone company was phasing out operators and allowing people to do direct 
dialing. They had to tell people what a dial tone was, what a ring 
sounded like, what a busy signal was. No one does this any more, but 
early on it's important. It was only a few years ago that GUIs were 
introduced and we were all asking how much documentation we would do on 
using a mouse (Click and hold down the left mouse button as you select 
the text ...").

Basically, I think Sharon is correct. Beginners don't stay beginners 
long. Intermediates form by far the largest user constituency. Experts 
really only want answers to fairly esoteric questions. In new technology 
situations, we provided some into material because we had to. We kept it 
short and focused on the 80/20 rule: we addressed the 20% of the 
application that people would use 80% of the time. We put almost all our 
effort into the intermediate area.

This manifested itself primarily in the level of detail we wrote. We 
didn't write a lot in those areas of interest primarily for beginners. 
We made sure we provided enough material for our target audience to 
"get" what they needed to use the application. We approached the task by 
looking closely at all the information that might be desired, and made 
sure we didn't write too much at too low (or high) a level so that we 
truly addressed the middle ground

In about 10 years of taking this approach, I can't recall a single 
complaint about too little or too much information, either from 
customers or internal users. And no one had to pick up the slack because 
we worked closely with the training people so they knew exactly what the 
documentation would and wouldn't cover, and they did a good job of hand 
holding for those folks that needed it at the beginning.

My 2¢,


John Garison



Sharon Burton wrote: