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Subject:Re: These users have us stumped! From:cpwinter -at- rahul -dot- net To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 24 Oct 2002 08:47:18 -0700
On 23 Oct 2002, at 10:50, Gilger.John wrote:
>
> The TW crew here just had a chat with the folks in Apps Support/Training.
> They are asking us to dumb down the User Docs even more. Our product's GUI
> has been designed to be extremely intuitive and user friendly. Ease of use
> is a primary selling point.
>
> We write at approximately the 6th grade level now. Short sentances and
> simple words are the rule. One problem is that we make the assumption that
> the user is familier with using Windows. Not so, say the front line
> trainers.
>
> The end users do not know how to use a computer. At a recent training
> session (10 students) three students picked up their mice and touched the
> screen with it when told to "Point at the icon with your mouse." The lady
> managing these users says that they can't understand the context sensitive
> on-line help that says, "Right-click on XXX and select YYY from the list."
> and includes a screen shot of the cursor pointing at XXX and another screen
> shot of the expanded list with YYY highlighted.
>
> The root cause of this is that even though our customers pay well over a
> million dollars for our product, they won't pay the users more than $6 per
> hour (minimum wage). People with a high school education and posibly some
> exposure to computers won't work that cheap.
>
> So the question is: Does anyone have any experience or ideas about writing a
> non-technical user's guide for the totally clueless?
>
OK, my two pfennigs...
Your company has two choices: It can spend money on your TW
group, so you can set about dumbing down your user manual, or it can
spend money on the Apps Support/Training group, so that they can
educate the "totally clueless".
Now as I understand it, the Apps Support/Training group wants your
TW group to fix their immediate problem by dumbing down your manual.
The problem is if you do that, you may annoy the relatively cluefull users,
much the way that "Clippie" annoys anyone who knows MS Office.
Another option is to produce some sort of a "crutch" -- a separate
document just for the "TC" users. As others have suggested, this could
be a quick start card or a short guide to basic computer operation.
But I think this problem is best solved by training. (Probably your
Apps group knows this, but has no budget for it.) IIRC, there is software
which will teach this elementary stuff; the problem is finding it and getting
authorization to use it in your company.
FWIW,
Chris
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