Need some ideas?

Subject: Need some ideas?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:46:55 -0400


Sharon Burton wondered: <<I have gotten a client's training group to agree to include a "demographics" form with the course evaluations. This is a huge deal for this client, as it is the first step to starting to find out about our documentation users.>>

Beware! Demographic information is very useful when it comes to marketing, but much less useful when it comes to finding out what you need to know about how people interact with your product. Purely demographic information is descriptive, not prescriptive. If your goal is to improve, you need prescriptive information.

<<I know about the basic demographic stuff like age, sex, education, number of years on the job, that stuff.>>

The problem with all such measures is that they are at least one step removed from what you really need to know to make your product more usable. For example, does the fact that you're female and I'm male change how we use documentation? Not generally. We both pick up the book using one or two hands, turn to the index, scan to find a topic, flip to the desired page(s), read the relevant part of the text, then grab the mouse (or use a keyboard shortcut) and get to work. _These_ are the important factors.

For some insights on prescriptive audience analysis:
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/magazine/writing/ prescriptiveanalysis.html

<<Anyone have anything they have included on something like this that turned out to generate really useful info?>>

The key to obtaining useful data is recognizing that the data must provide a means of acting: noting that 52% of your audience is female is generally irrelevant* because this information provides no basis on which you can improve the product. Noting that 52% of your readers refuse to use keyboard shortcuts, irrespective of their sex, is very important; it means that your documentation must emphasize mouse use (which will work for both keyboard nuts and refuseniks). Noting that 50% of your audience is older than 60 is irrelevant; recognizing that 50% of these older people have visual problems is.

* There are certainly cases where an audience's sex is important. For example, ever wondered why the lines outside the women's washroom during the intermission at a play are 10 times as long as the lines outside the men's washroom? Because architects are oblivious to the fact that women and men are "setters and pointers", respectively, and thus, women inherently take longer in the bathroom on average. But do they build three times as many stalls for women as they do for men? Nope. Maybe they should read my article! <g>

--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ROBOHELP X5 - ALL NEW VERSION!!
Have you tried the latest in Help Authoring from RoboHelp?
Try ROBOHELP X5 for Free - Now with Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more!
Download a free trial today: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l4

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



Follow-Ups:

References:
Need some ideas: From: Sharon Burton

Previous by Author: Screenshots from an LCD monitor?
Next by Author: Don't say what you CANNOT do in documents?
Previous by Thread: Re: Need some ideas - Clarification
Next by Thread: Re: Need some ideas?


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads