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Subject:RE: What is More Important? From:"Gordon McLean" <Gordon -dot- McLean -at- GrahamTechnology -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 17 May 2007 14:11:34 +0100
Or, as John Maeda puts it in his book on the "Laws of Simplicity" (although
I think it was a teacher of his that he was quoting)
"Be the lightbulb, not the laser".
Gordon
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+gordon -dot- mclean=grahamtechnology -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+gordon -dot- mclean=grahamtechnology -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
om] On Behalf Of Mary Arrotti
Sent: 17 May 2007 13:51
To: Stuart Burnfield; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: What is More Important?
Some really good comments on this thread but I particularly like what Stuart
wrote here. The ultimate measure of a writer's success is the documentation.
Or to phrase differently - the proof is in the pudding.
What does it matter if you are a technical expert in your industry if your
audience can't get what they need from your docs?
The best & most highly skilled writers I've known continue to work on
improving their skills in every aspect of their responsibilities. It's not
enough to be the best one in your group in one category - instead, you
should be learning from others - not positioning your skill set as being
"more important."
Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au> wrote:
I'm with those who think that this question, as it's worded now, can't be
answered meaningfully.
There are things that matter other than being technically accurate and well
written. If any of these can make it harder for readers to understand a
concept or complete a task, how is it meaningful to pick two factors and ask
which is more important?
Here's a thought experiment: imagine you have asked ten representative users
to test a procedure. Two testers complete the task successfully in a
reasonable time. Four testers complete the task but it takes them a lot
longer. The other four testers don't successfully complete the task.
You talk to all the testers and discover the following:
- one component was labeled incorrectly
- one instruction was ambiguous--it could be read two ways, one right and
one wrong
- one tester took over three minutes to find a relevant topic; another
tester didn't find it at all.
- a table was formatted using a smaller font that one tester found too hard
to read
- the diagram on p33 appears to contradict the text explanation on p32
- only three of testers understood that the terms 'node' and 'host'
sometimes referred to the same thing and sometimes to different things
- the instructions are correct if you happen to be operating in console mode
but not if you happen to be in log mode
- in one very long and complex sentence, it was hard to tell whether a step
had to be done by an operator or a by supervisor or if it would just happen
automatically
There are a lot of problems here. Some are problems of technical accuracy,
some are due to poor writing, some are neither. In what way is it useful to
say that the technical problems are more important, or the writing problems
are more important, or that the technical and writing problems are more
important than the others?
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