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Subject:Re: Humor as a communication technique From:Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK> Date:Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:02:02 +0100
As with a lot of things, the problem is finding a balance. It also depends
very much on the context and what is required.
On one hand, when at college, one of the best books I read on programming
(Basic for beginners - my first contact with programming!) was written in a
font which gave the impression of being hand written and had little insects
(bugs) crawling over the pages at regular intervals to highlight problem
areas etc. I found this worked extremely well and helped me take my first
faultering steps in programming. Currently I receive TC-Forum (a quarterly
TW forum supported by INTECOM) which has introduced a little cartoon
character to highlight items. This followed an article on using cartoons
in technical manuals. An interesting article and, again, it works quite
well.
On the other hand I have seen manuals where cartoons/humour etc have been
used that has been totally inappropriate and simply detracted from the
overall impact of the manual. As to Andrew's comment that people want
something more than simple directions I'm not convinced - again it depends
on the context. If you're using a WP package, for example, and want to
create a list then you're more likely to want Step 1, Step 2 and so on
rather than the background as to how lists are generated etc. In other
cases it may well be beneficial to provide that background information (our
online help for screens is "how to" with links to background info if you
wnat to go and read it!). If you ARE going to provide background info for
the user you then have the problem "at what level" - as they say a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.
As a lot of things in TW it comes down to "know your audience" - will they
benefit from it? appreciate it? etc. Humour can be useful and effective
but only if used in the right place/context.
