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Is your manager someone with fiction publishing experience? The
"capture their attention in the first five pages" is a common enough
dictum in that world, but it seems somewhat silly in user manuals. (I
even have a book aimed at fiction writers called "The First Five
Pages" IIRC).
This judgement flows from the fact that few people read a user manual
from front to back. Instead, they tend to use it to find a particular
issue they don't understand...then put it up.
Ask yourself: if you were to make a survey of users in any given
department of an organization to determine patterns of use--compare
the likely number of manuals that have been read front to back with
those that have never been opened in any serious way. I would bet the
latter far outnumber the former.
There is a relatively good argument that any section of a user manual
that is frequently consulted by most users is more an indictment of
the program and a faulty UI than it is to the nature of the
documentation.
Of course, the situation may be far different for a tutorial.
I do think there is one technique that can raise the level of interest
in any user manual: feature in *every* section a rundown of the
*benefits* the user will garner by going through that section. If the
section actually delivers on those benefits, many users will quickly
learn that the manual is actually worth their time and effort. The
catch is that if any given section does not deliver the promised
benefits, the credibility of the whole thing is suspect in the mind of
its users.
If any section has no real benefits, consider eliminating it entirely.
Personally, when I am writing I form a mental image of typical users
of the product. Each of them has a bubble floating in the air with
large letters--and each is the same. They say "WIIFM"..."What's in it
for me?" Answering that gives you the only sure method of capturing
and holding their attention, I believe. Doing it in every section
helps focus the content, and works for those who would never think of
reading front to back.
David
On 9/20/05, Lucero, Peggy <plucero -at- atsva -dot- com> wrote:
>
> OK, I've gotten feedback from boss about the User Manual. Complaint is
> first 5-7 pages just don't grab and pull the reader in.
> I've been told that it needs more purpose and focus.
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