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Re: Animated GIFs in documentation

Subject: Re: Animated GIFs in documentation
From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 13:51:11 -0400

On Wed, 18 May 2016 12:34:19 -0400, Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote in part:

- Due to screen sizes, I can't always figure out from watching someone
click through a task, exactly what I'm supposed to do. Even more
important, WHY the person made the choices that they did?

You have hit upon the difference between tech writing and geek-made stuff intended for stuffed geeks.

Ever see one of those videos that's supposed to teach you about some piece of software? The video shows an active screen shot, and a voice-over says, "So we just click here and select the first parameter, and there for the second, then we click over here to choose the scaling factor, and we click done and we're done." Things on the screen change, but you cannot tell where any of the "over here" places are, or what values were entered, or why the user might have chosen one value over another.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to sell your company on the value of genuine tech writing. You might ask them to test the existing doc set on a truly naive audience.
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