Re: Magical Thinking and Grimoires

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Bruce -

> I notice that even some advanced users frequently resort to
> what I call "magical thinking." That is, they know that typing a certain
> command with certain parameters will get certain results, but they don't
> understand the details of what thye're doing.

What you're seeing is the result of people making a 'how much do I need
to know?" choice.  We see it all the time when we run a program or
document or Help file past a designated naive user.

One of the more poignant examples happened last month.  One of our
clients is creating a program to help field sales people create
presentations using existing material provided them by a headquarters
organization (think of a marcom or sales support department). In a
discussion with two of the developers, we pointed out that few busy
users would care why certain things were there, and in the resulting
discussion the head of development felt challenged enough to drag in one
of the company's brand-new sales people for a show-us-how-you-learn
session at the computer.  We managed to convince the sales guy that his
naivete was among the most important things he brought to this session,
and that we were really after his thought processes in learning how to
use the system.  We told him we wanted him to skim through the program
and then try to assemble some small presentation with material that was
included.  After 20 minutes, he said "Well, now I know enough to be able
to do in this program what it would have taken me 5 minutes in
PowerPoint."

And that, dear readers, drove home the point about how people in this
particular target audience learn.  Our designated naive user didn't care
why the program did what it did, he simply had some tasks to perform,
and he had a limited amount of time to learn whether a new tool would be
worth his investment of time.  If we couldn't get him productive within
20 minutes, we'd lose him.

As could have been predicted, the head of development overrode our
recommendation to rework the interface (and hence the instructions), and
released the software anyway. He has since been overridden by marketing
and sales management, and his group will be rewriting the interface (and
instructions).
>
> To these users, commands are magical spells, and their notebooks are
> like a sorcerer's grimoire, full of unystematic notes about how to get
> specific results, but with little overview or understanding of the
> processes involved.

Exactly!  So many developers think that most users really CARE about why
something works the way it does. The truth is that most don't care -
they have a tool that they've invested in, with the hope that it will
make them more productive at whatever it is that they do.  Just as a new
homeowner doesn't usually have time to learn why one hammer is better
than another, a new user doesn't usually have time to learn the context
for a particular command.

A reference manual is probably the best place for contextual
explanations.  People approach a reference manual much like they might
approach an encyclopedia - they expect to spend some time researching
the whys and wherefores as they open the book - but most folks expect a
user's guide to help them get productive quickly.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems