TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: A Great Analogy (was: Stupid users) From:"Lauren Tozer" <TAMETO01 -at- noa -dot- nintendo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 03 Oct 2003 09:30:41 -0700
At least I think it's great.
Here's a case where the producer of the thing was trying to make itself
look good, but didn't take into consideration how the consumer would use
the product.
McDonalds did research on how to get the best taste out of the coffee,
and they figured that most people would not be drinking the coffee
immediately. (This is a guess, but I imagine that one of the parameter
given to the researcher was that the coffee would not be consumed
immediately.) As it has been said many times on this list, find out
what your user wants. McDonald's didn't, and the results speak for
themselves.
Granted there was some stupidity on the part of the user, but had the
product matched the users needs better (drinkable coffee), then the user
would have only suffered embarrassment rather than burns.
In terms of writing, if we don't know how the reader is going to use
the product, then we cannot write documentation to suit that need. It
doesn't matter if our documents look great or use clear language if they
are not usable to the reader in the context of their job.
Will that prevent user stupidity? No. We can't work miracles (except
when it comes to deadlines).
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or view a live demo at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
