Wanted: "Right" Standards for User Manual (appliance)?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Greg Richards wondered: <<I work for a commercial kitchen equipment  
manufacturer that is trying to get a little more professional with its  
user documentation. A typical product would be a refrigerator or food  
warmer. I am dazed and confused searching for relevant standards for  
user documentation.>>

That's probably because there are no broadly recognized overall  
standards. You may be able to find some international standards for  
specific things such as warning symbols*, but I've never believed that  
(for a general audience) these standards make much difference; I  
strongly suspect that the clarity of the wording and of the layout is  
far more important than any nominally "standard" symbols, since most  
nontechnical readers don't know the standard exists and thus, may not  
be familiar with it unless they read a lot of labels.

* See, for example, an illustration of the ISO 3864 labels at  
<http://www.safetylabelsolutions.com/Standards/International/ 
international.html> and check out the organization itself at  
<http://www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage> to track down the  
standard.

At the moment, our profession is in one of those states of evolution  
where we have a wide range of supposed "best practices", only some of  
which are supported by good research and only some of which are broadly  
generalizable. This leaves us in the uncomfortable situation of having  
to do our best to reinvent the wheel for each new type of project.  
Fortunately, we have lots of wheelwrights here on techwr-l. <g>

<<The equipment is very simple to use--mostly, we are talking on/off  
and some maintenance. So that's easy to cover; but I want to make sure  
we comply with standards for safety and hazard cautions, warnings.>>

My recommendation is to visit your local appliance store to see what  
kinds of approaches are being taken in the manuals for a range of  
products. These are the kinds of approaches that consumers will be  
familiar with, irrespective of whether they know of any standard.

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