Re: Testing your reviewers

[Gail Taylor <gtaylor -at- ISLANDNET -dot- COM>]

I wrote: >>I decided that the nice formatting definitely got in the way of
tehcnical
>>reviews, and contemplated producing tech-review drafts using a much plainer
>>format - not wrapping anything much in paragraphs.
>>
and Wayne  Douglass wrote
> How did you come to this conclusion? Back in the Neolithic Era of
>publications when Courier type on a letter quality printer was barely on its
>way out, we found that drafts in our new DTP format got *closer* scrutiny
>from our reviewers because they were easier to read and seemed "official"
>because they appeared to be ready to go to the printer. Reviewers seemed to
>think that this was their last chance to catch errors and they focused their
>attention accordingly. Back then typography had some novelty value; today
>reviewers may be more blase.

The era was "everyone's-a-page-designer" late 1980s - I had a feeling some
reviewers focussing on the appearance too much ("yeah, that looks good"). I
planned to test the idea with the next iteration of the product, isolating
items, but was still deciding how to eliminate variables.

Gail Taylor (gtaylor -at- islandnet -dot- com)
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