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Subject:Re: You Don't Need to Know How From:Scott Browne <sbbish -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:38:41 -0700 (PDT)
--- Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
<snip>
> Let me put it another way - ignorance is more
> obvious than intelligence.
> If you're ignorant about the product you're
> documenting, it will shine
> through in glorious full-color stupidity in your
> documentation. You will
> offend readers and turn off customers. However, if
> you know your products
> very well, your expertise will make the material
> useful and meaningful -
> leading to happy customers and less support calls.
<snip>
This is still part of knowing your audience - a point
I think we all agree on.
At my present company, our past documentation of our
software was extremely in-depth and showed a great
deal of product knowledge. If you could conceivably do
it with our software or if it might affect 1 out of
1000 users, we documented it. We provided every
possible bit of information about our software. To use
an analogy (and remember, Andrew, this is only an
analogy and naturally not a perfect comparison ;) we
told our customers how to cook with the oven, how to
clean the oven, how to do maintenance on the oven, how
to make repairs to the oven, and how to take the oven
apart and put it back together - blindfolded. Our
developers, architects, and integrators loved it. Our
customers and users (the ones who actually paid for
and used the software) hated it. They all said it was
way too much information. They told us straight out
that they wanted "Do A to get B" documentation. They
didn't care how or why it worked, only what to do to
make it work. We stripped down the documentation by
about 75%. We took it to our customers (several of
them), showed it to them, and asked their opinions.
They loved it. They raved. We have been receiving
numerous comments from our customers stating they
can't wait for the next release of our software when
the new documentation is implemented.
Ignorance *is* more obvious than intelligence. But
expertise in the product will not necessarily make
useful and meaningful documentation. Without knowing
the audience, too much makes it just as useless as too
little.
Scott
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