Re: "Know thy audience"; was: RE: What is "well Written"?

["David Neeley" <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

John,

You addressed a different point than I did. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough...

The "discovery" of which I was referring was that of the *user* of the
documentation. They turn to the documentation, by and large, to figure out
how to accomplish one or more tasks, or perhaps what tasks they need to be
doing at a given point in their work. I believe it is our job to make that
discovery process as effective and trouble-free as possible.

Your point, I think, is quite different--how to discover the most effective
methods of reaching the target audience, and how to test various solutions
to be sure you are getting the best one. Those are obviously not invalid
points, just different ones.

David

On 5/21/07, John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Sorry for the delay in responding...deadlines, ya'know?
>
> anyway...
>
> > It is our function, among other things, to create
> > documentation that makes the discovery of what to
> > seek a straightforward task with a minimum
> > of frustrations. (Also why a good index is a godsend,
> > to respond to yet another current thread!)
>
> Documentation makes no discoveries...you need to make your
> discoveries and, in my opinion, can only do it WITH documentation by
> testing how it is used, examining the results of the tests and making
> continual improvements to the documentation based on the tests.
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