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Subject:Re: Eliminating Need for Technical Support From:Jim Purcell <jimpur -at- MICROSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 19 Jun 1997 09:35:57 -0700
Fabien Vais opines:
> So, there are in my opinion two main reasons why documentation often
> has
> such a bad name:
>
> 1. Lousy technical writers have been writing those manuals in the
> past. This
> is slowly changing. Better (or excellent) tech. writers are now taking
> over
> the industry, so things are slowly getting better.
>
While it's probably true that more jobs and better compensation has
raised the standard of writers who enter the profession, to characterize
the writers of the past as "lousy" is plain uninformed. Manuals for mass
readership didn't even exist until the introduction of the PC. That
early manuals took as their model the older manuals written for a more
initiated audience was probably inevitable. That the documentation model
(and therefore, the documentation) has improved so much is due primarily
to customer demand, market and academic research, information networks
such as this one, and more appropriate and better understood conventions
of genre than. Without all that, better writers wouldn't be making much
of a difference.
> 2. Because of lousy software design, even the best technical writers
> have a
> very hard time simplifying the interface and user functions of the
> software.
> I've had arguments with software designers about their interface, and
> all
> too often, I'm told that it would be too complicated to simplify
> things that
> much, and that that's the way it's going to be....for now! The classic
> "for
> now!"
>
There's that word again. Graphical interface design, too, is barely out
of its infancy. The Macintosh came out, when, in 1984? (There were
GUI-based systems before, of course, but they were mostly prototypes or
expensive failures.) Better programming tools have made it much easier
to develop GUIs that can be easily modified at any time in the
development cycle (to the chagrin of the writers who have to keep up
with these changes), but those tools are also fairly new. Again,
research and the market have made possible advances in the UI that
talent alone would not have achieved so soon.
> I hope this has helped, Matthew. In many cases, all we can do is our
> best to
> provide the clearest possible documentation. Unfortunately, in some
> cases,
> this will still not be enough to stop people from calling Technical
> Support.
> Therefore, I feel we still have a lot more work to do for the next few
> years
> at least.
>
It is not the job of the documentation to put tech support out of
business, but to eliminate support calls about common tasks that
everybody ought to be able to do easily. We're getting better at this,
but there is always room for improvement.
Jim Purcell
jimpur -at- microsoft -dot- com
My opinions, not Microsoft's
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