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Subject:Re: Info vs products From:Wayne Douglass <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 30 Jun 1997 10:02:15 -0700
At 06:32 PM 6/28/97 +1, Peter Ring wrote:
>If the product is a mee-too model of a well known type of product,
>step-by-step instructions are the important thing to lead the user
>through some hard to guess procedures. Example: how to set the time
>on your digital wrist-watch. No big need for a lot of "understanding
>the background", etc. info here. Just the correct procedures, please.
>
Just! I've *never* read documentation for setting a digital clock/watch that
made any sense. Once my company gave every employee a gift that included a
digital clock, and company email was tied up for days with everyone trying
to explain how to set the time. Eventually we all figured it out by pressing
buttons at random and observing the effects.
As a sidebar, when I visited someone in Italy many years ago I was asked to
set a digital clock that came as a gift in a box of detergent ("you're in
computers, you ought to know how to do this"). After a quick glance at the
instructions in Italian, a language I do not understand, I reverted to
pressing buttons at random until I figured out how it worked.
--Wayne
----------------------------------------------
Wayne Douglass phone: 408-542-2139
Verity, Inc. FAX: 408-542-2040
894 Ross Road mailto: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 http://www.verity.com
"Connecting People With Information"
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