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

["Connie Giordano" <connie -at- therightwordz -dot- com>]

Good points Yves -- It's hard to do it, or even justify it for documentation alone.  It's more useful--and more relevant to the whole product effort--if documentation is checked within the context of usability. e.g., If you're running any kind of usability testing on the product, make sure the observers note the frequency with which they refer to the documentation, and if it helps them actually complete the task. If they still fail, you can trace it to poor user interface design, or to poor documentation design or inaccurate documetnation, or some combination of the three.

Then your issue becomes trying to get management to agree to usability testing. The only case I've ever made that works is the if users can't complete the tasks within a reasonable timeframe or at all, then the product does not meet customer requirements and fails UAT. Sometimes they sit up and take notice, sometimes they don't.  Depends on the speed at which GA is flying at the team and how much money is riding on making the date.

Connie P. Giordano
The Right Words
Communications & Information Design
(704) 957-8450 (cell)

www.therightwords.com
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."   - Walt Disney


>  -------Original Message-------
>  From: Yves JEAUROND <jingting -at- rogers -dot- com>
>  Subject: Re: "Know thy audience"; was: RE: What is "well Written"?
>  Sent: 21 May '07 15:51
>  
>  John makes a logical case;
>  it is difficult though getting users to go through the trouble of
>  filling out a card or what not, to communicate their success
>  rate for each procedure in every manual they use.
>    Do such users in fact exist?
>    
>    I don't mean to rain on the parade of quantification,
>    and data acquisition; the big, grey cloud of impractical idealism
>  hovers over getting objective, measurable criticism when it comes
>  to an art like TW.
>    
>    And a "typical" user? Who are they? Where do they live?
>  What's their background? Are they repeat customers?
>  Is five of them in a classroom environment a representative sample
>  for six sigma work? It gets subjective, complicated and qualitative
>  mighty quickly :-)
>    
>    There's also trigger-happy management to consider:
>    you get kudos from customers and little happens. Then one complaint
>  comes in--fair or unfair--and what happens next :-( ?
>    
>    My three cents,
>    YJ
>    
>    
>  John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> a écrit :
>    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.
>  
>  Get five typical users. Present to them a section of a document and
>  observe if/how they were able to accomplish the goal of the section,
>  what conent they used, what they didn't. Maybe an index is good...you
>  don't know until you observe and se that they looked for an
>  index...if not one of your test subjects looked for one, how useful
>  would it be?
>  
>  If they were not able to perform the task, or if they were but with
>  dificulty/questions/needed hints, address where they were having the
>  problem, then test five other typical users. Continue this cycle
>  untill you've reached a satisfactory result, run out of users, run
>  out of time, or run out of money. At least now you have a better idea
>  of the appropriate type of documentation, it's depth, how detailed,
>  how technical, what kind of language, etc. Now make style guide and
>  templates reflect this investigation, as long as the targeted user is
>  the same.
>  
>  John Posada
>  Senior Technical Writer
>  
>  "They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
>  So far, so good."
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