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I'm not saying grandma should have to plow through the concepts in order to get to the procedure. I'm talking about something similar to what Gene outlined... make the concepts available as related topics. Just don't omit them completely as some companies are doing.
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On 2/2/2011 12:03 PM, John Posada wrote:
>>> Many companies are adopting the Tivo model that Laura reported
>>> and I feel that's a big disservice to users. If we help them
>>> understand the the why, they'll have an easier time dealing with the how.
>
> That works in the area of software documentation to professionals in
> the tech field, the kind that we are used to dealing with.
>
> However, picture your grandmother. She has a phone and the audio sound
> is poor...her granschild sounds garbled when she calls to say hello on
> Sunday afternoon.
>
> Does she want to read stuff that includes, but is not limited to:
>
> "Noise interference only affects analog waves; therefore static or
> garbled audio can occur wherever analog waves are used in the system.
> To reduce this possibility, the only section of the telephone system
> that will use analog waves is from the phone port on the device to the
> telephone handset. No matter what setup you have, the signal has to
> get translated to analog waves at some point, or else you wound not be
> able to understand the sound coming out of the phone. "
>
> or does she want to read
>
> Step 1 ...
> Step 2 ..
> Step 3 ..
>
> We aren't adopting it because it's cheaper...on the contrary,
> conceptual material is cheaper to write than procedures.
>
> We're adopting it because we read several hundred comments per week
> from customers through article feedback and this is what they are
> telling us they want.
>
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