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RE: How do you define your audience/"user requirements" in your docs, to the reader?
Subject:RE: How do you define your audience/"user requirements" in your docs, to the reader? From:Michael West <WestM -at- conwag -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:14:53 +1000
> Mike West stated: I don't know how you could have written a usable
>manual without a clear idea of what roles you were writing for.
>Although several Techwr-lers have provided very helpful feedback, Mike
>is at least the second person to post without understanding what I was
>asking.
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In your original post you stated, "I do not have 'user requirements'."
If you don't know what your users require, or what is required of them,
then I don't see how you could write a useful set of instructions for
them.
Perhaps what you meant is not what you wrote.
My advice to you, in any case, is to focus on helping them do what they
need to do, not their "metacognitive competence", or in representing
themselves to themselves, both of which appear to me to be pointless
distractions by comparison.
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