RE: Screen captures (was RE: TECHWR-L Digest, Vol 35, Issue 14)

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Boudreaux, Madelyn wrote: 
 
> I know this study -- possibly flawed, certainly old -- doesn't say
what
> we all think to be true in our infinite conventional wisdom. But we
> either commission a new study, or we work with what we've got. Upon
> meeting studies that don't make us happy, we can fight them, or we can
> think about ways to use the information.

Or we can use our judgment and arrive at any of a number of other
conclusions, such as: the study is too flawed to trust its findings, or
the testing scenarios aren't relevant to what I'm doing, or the test
subjects aren't representative of my audience, or... I don't _have_ to
do a new study or accept the old one -- doing _neither_ is a completely
reasonable choice, IMHO. 
 
Tom Johnson wrote:

> supposed to click. For example, if I wrote "Click the Print button,"
I'd
> have a line extending from the word Print to the actual Print button
in a
> full screenshot.

Why? Does your audience needs to be shown a Print button in order to
understand your instruction? Is the user interface a crowded, jumbled
mess where command buttons are randomly scattered about and hard to
find? Or is there some other reason? 

I'm confident that if I write "Click the Print button," my audience will
understand me and will have no trouble finding the Print button in the
reasonably well-designed and consistent interface. So why do I need a
picture with circles and arrows? 

Everything involves trade-offs: 

-- If I spend X hours lovingly massaging scores of screenshots that add
little or no value for my audience, I'm not spending that time doing
something more valuable. 

-- If I turn an 80-page manual into a 200-page manual by catering to the
3-5% of the audience that needs plenty of reassuring pictures and lots
of hand-holding, maybe 20-30% of the audience gets turned off by the
sheer bulk and/or the boring and tediously simplistic content. 

Don't try to please everyone or make everything of equal importance --
you'll please no one and do everything poorly. 

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------






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