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>>The DEVELOPERS/DESIGNERS can encourage the users >>to read our manuals by
>>making our manuals necessary! ;-)
For the most part, this is the case, and provides us job security. But,
tech writers shouldn't be offended if end users are inherently lazy and
don't care to read the manual. Heck, I don't want to read the manual either.
And, when I do, it is certainly not in pursuit of beautiful prose. (For that
I look to my favorite mailing list... )I just want to find the info that I
need and get back to work. So, we shouldn't be concerned whether people feel
the need to read the manual or not. Just be sure that when they do need to
read the manual (because the user interface is not intuitive or because the
user is inexperienced with that type of software) that your efforts to make
it a pain-free experience pay off.
with my 1.5 cents,
----
Michael Rice
Deltagen, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Brady, Joy [mailto:JBrady -at- alldata -dot- net]
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 8:11 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Interesting Product Review
Bill Hartzer wonders: "What can we do, as Technical Writers, to
encourage that our users read
> the manuals we create?"
>
I suppose the good screen prompts could have been due to the contributions
of a technical communicator. Luckily, not ALL technical writing work is
about how to use software. In any case, it seems to me that software that
has a narrow focus (such as Business Card Designer Plus) would probably lend
itself to online wizards or "prompts."
The DEVELOPERS/DESIGNERS can encourage the users to read our manuals by
making our manuals necessary! ;-)
Joy
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