atw: Re: Should we always give users what they ask for?

  • From: "Michael Lewis" <Michael.Lewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:24:38 +1100

An interesting debate, where only a few people have touched on the two critical 
points -- the whole target audience (including secondary audiences) and the 
difference between needs and wants. 

Most documents are, indeed, produced for several purposes. We can predict with 
some confidence that the nominal primary audience is "users" -- people who must 
perform some range of tasks or functions, and that a secondary audience is 
often the legal trade -- people who must be satisfied that the manufacturer or 
seller has (or has not) taken all appropriate precautions to ensure safety, 
fitness for purpose, and so on. But these various purposes can be pursued in a 
variety of contexts, including training and real-world application, so the 
technical communicator must be able to foresee at least the more likely of 
those scenarios, and factor in variables such as urgency.

When users ask for something, we can bet that they aren't always foreseeing 
many different scenarios, but more to the point they aren't trained -- as 
technical communicators should be, but sometimes aren't -- in needs analysis. 
What they ask for might not be what they need.

Michael Lewis
Lecturer
Department of Linguistics
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109

Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 7856
Mobile: +61 (0)414 887782
Fax: +61 (0)2 9850 9199
www.ling.mq.edu.au

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