Re: Documenting for the non-typical user? WAS: Fields arranged as a sentence

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

<<This must be the argument that you are using to keep yourself in work.
Applying Paretian analysis to your comment:
What you have written covers the questions of 20% of your audience This means
that to answer the questions of the other 80% you will need to write the other
80% of the documentation as well!>>

Anthony,

I think you've misunderstood.
If the non-typical user is creating 80% of the support calls, 80% of the
documentation should be aimed at this non-typical user. The percentage of total
users that this non-typical user represents may be incredibly small but is
undetermined. It may even only be 1% of the user base. But for effective
documentation and to eliminate support calls, 80% of the documentation effort
should be for the 1% of the user base and 20% for the other 99% of the user
base.
The idea that was proposed (and one that I think is the truth) is that the
typical user of the product is NOT necessarily the typical user or target
audience of the documentation.

Eric L. Dunn




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