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I'd like to formally mark this in the calendar. Quite an admission John!
(personally I like your curmudgeon-ness, usually because you tend to offer
insightful responses).
I've scanned through this discussion and for the record, yes I work for a
software company. I've spent three days in high-level planning for a new
product and mostly the developers in the room started most sentences with
"OK, I'm logged in as a BLAH user, what do I see??". Not all software houses
are the same, quite a few hire intelligent people who understand that what
they are building (as a team) will be used by real people.
Most of our argu...discussions, centre around "what would the user expect?".
The knock on effect of all this is that, in the coming year or so, we will
slowly move away from documenting the basic usage of our application (there
is a lot of repetition which we'll reference them too in a 'getting started'
type of thing) and concentrate on the harder stuff. The easier the UI is,
the lessen of the requirement to document it at a "click this, click this"
level and that should leave us more scope to improve the documentation in
other areas.
It's a fine balance of course.
Gordon
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www.onemanwrites.co.uk
-----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 John Posada
Sent: 25 July 2007 22:34
To: Eric Dunn; TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: The coming predominance of user experience
andtechnicalcommunications
>> So, your problem with the questions they do ask is that they don't
>> ask the questions that YOU think they should ask. Keep in mind that
>> the most ity-bitty question they could ask is should this be a 0 or a
>> 1...but I'll bet it can be a very important question.
>
> As helpful and insightful as you can be at times John, other times you
>come across a stubborn curmudgeon. :p
Absolutely!
Sorry...it's a knee-jerk reaction to any message where I perceive even the
slightest an acceptance that less knowledge and questions is as good or
better than more knowledge with less questions. I can't help it. My fingers
start banging away at the keys as I watch in horror at the message that's
being sent out in my name.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
So far, so good."
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