Re: Customers who read manuals from cover to cover

[Elna Tymes <Etymes -at- LTS -dot- com>]

"Brierley, Sean" wrote:

> The "nobody reads the manual anyway" idea is a complete and utter myth that
> is too-often used as an excuse to divert resources away from documentation
> or, at least, as an excuse for hurried or poorly planned and considered
> documentation. The truth is, most of the people that repeat "nobody reads
> the manual anyway" have never studied or tested that theory and they have no
> clue whether it is true.

Well, Sean, you never met people from my company.  We've done several
unpublished studies of users that showed that people will do many other things
before finally reading the manual.  Depending on the user, of course, people
will (1) fiddle with the program, trying to figure out how it works, (2) ask a
friend (commonly known as the "Hey Joe!" phenomenon),  (3) try the online help
IF they have previously used online help and found it useful, (4) try training
aids, if they took a class, (5) flip through the manual's TOC and index, looking
for specific solutions to specific problems, (6) get a third-party book or other
aid on the product. Most, including programmers, will never really *read* the
manual front to back.  Programmers will turn to the online help faster than most
other users.  System admins may or may not use the online help, depending on
whether they're trying to solve an immediate problem.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems


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