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RE: Thinking like a user, or sticking to tried and true?
Subject:RE: Thinking like a user, or sticking to tried and true? From:"Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com> To:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 21 Dec 2006 07:55:25 -0800
This is an interesting idea to me - that we should write to 100% of our
users, or include the info if there is the possibility that 1 person in our
audience wouldn't know. I wonder if that's possible or even reasonable.
If we think of users as being in 3 classes
* beginners - people who are new to the product or technology
* intermediates - people who are pretty good at the product or technology
* experts - people who are very good at the product or technology
I believe that research done by Karen Shriver shows that most users are in
the intermediate group. Even beginners pretty quickly move to the
intermediate level. Most users don't get to the expert level for a variety
of reasons such as they simply don't care to.
Given that time is a limited resource - we don't have all the time in the
world to create docs - wouldn't our effort be best spent on writing for that
intermediate group? That would mean that we can help the bulk of our users
with our limited resource.
My reasoning is:
* beginners - They are so new to the product or technology that we probably
can't help them in the docs. Perhaps they should attend a class of some
sort?
* intermediates - We can help these people in the docs and they are the bulk
of our users.
* experts - Experts will typically figure things out on their own and so we
can trust them to help themselves. We don't have to worry about them in the
docs.
At my employer, we have chosen to focus on the intermediate group, as that
gives us the most audience coverage for our efforts. We assume that users
are a bell curve and we can help users up to one standard deviation out in
the docs.
Have others thought about this to this level? If so, what decisions did you
make?
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sharon=anthrobytes -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sharon=anthrobytes -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]On
Behalf Of Gene Kim-Eng
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 7:35 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Thinking like a user, or sticking to tried and true?
The question is, how 100% sure are you that no person who ever
reads this document will be a new user who is not familiar with
the system? If the information is readily available, I would say
it is better for a user to have it and not need it than to need it
and not have it.
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