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Subject:RE: Is there a term for this? From:"Wroblewski, Victoria" <vwroblewski -at- NECsphere -dot- com> To:Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>, Joe Weinmunson <litlfrog -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Mon, 6 Feb 2012 10:28:35 -0600
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Swallow
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: Is there a term for this?
Fustercluck. ;)
Can you clarify the situation and the question?
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Joe Weinmunson <litlfrog -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> A friend of mine wonders:
> "So if you have a list of items on a website, printed document, or
> other means of communication, and someone doesn't notice one of them,
> it seems to me that moving everything to the top in bold blinking
> colored fonts, while it might briefly solve the problem, does so by
> causing the problem for the next two times . . . is there a term for
> what I'm talking about, and is it a concept in use?"
>
---------
Also, RTFM. :)
Seriously... it's arguments for a defined target audience/level a lot of times. Most of the times I've run into suggestions of this type, it's not in dealing with something like the case of a target low reading-level audience in consumer documentation... it's a clear case of extremely technical documentation with one person who has a problem because they do not have the experience level to be doing something, or the general smarts to read directions closely. At least if you can chalk it up to someone not meeting the core audience requirements (for example, at the current place, we make it clear that a certain amount of Microsoft network admin skills are assumed) then at least you know where the failure was and you can make the case to NOT muck up the rest of the docs to cater to people who aren't qualified or just decide they don't need to follow instructions.
