Re: What about minimalism?

Subject: Re: What about minimalism?
From: Elna -dot- Tymes -at- SYNTEX -dot- COM
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 1994 22:52:18 PDT

In article <2E943311 -at- mkt -dot- eicon -dot- com>, <patricko -at- eicon -dot- com> writes:

> OK, time for a show of hands. Who doesn't RTFM for the tools they use --
> unless absolutely necessary -- but writes manuals for other ones (IMHO all
> programs are tools of one kind or another) notwithstanding?

> Tsk, tsk, tsk...

> Actually, I think a great deal can be gotten from applying your own
> experiences as a documentation user to what you're working on. It's the old
> put-yourself-in-the-user's-shoes principle -- as a documentation user, what
> do YOU like to see? Easier said than done, n'est-ce-pas?


I would hope that documents I've been involved in have benefited from my own
experience as an end-user. When columnist Larry Magid and I were thrashing
out an outline for a book we were contracted to write, we looked first to
our own learning styles as a guide to where the reader would be looking for
help, and realized that most users were going to be turning to the Help system
early on - if, indeed, they turned to anything other than what they could
learn simply by experimenting with the system.It became obvious that what our
book could best offer was insight into how to most effectively use the system,
rather than an elementary tutorial.

In evaluating how a reader will approach a complete manual set, however, I
think it's important to look closely at just how busy people learn about a
new tool, and go from there. For instance, a lot of people prefer to just
plunge right in and see if they can make something happen. They may get around
to that carefully crafted overview only after they have discovered the system
doesn't do something they think it should, and check the manual to see if they
have been mistaken about the system's intent. More and more, I'm seeing the
Human-Computer Interface wisdom behind Microsoft's (and others) forgoing the
usual narrative-based User's Guide and opting for more of a Reference Manual
(even if they DO call it a User's Guide). I also suspect we're in for more
forms of built-in training, like Help - The Next Generation.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems


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