atw: Re: Research on when customers need or want online help or manuals?
- From: Christine Kent <c.kent@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:46:53 +0000
We are assuming that the world runs by logic. It does not. The only item that
matters is the immediate bottom line, and no amount of good research and good
argument is going to matter a d**n if it does not affect the immediate bottom
line.
The product does not have to be “fit for purpose” as long as more gross profit
can be made from the shonky version than from a good version of whatever the
product is. The maths are done between quality and c**p, and c**p wins out
every time.
Corporations run the same way. The bosses are all on KPIs, and those KPIs are
almost always statistically based on invalid measurements of success. I have
never seen a KPI that placed a statistical value on quality technical writing
(except for the technical writer of course). KPIs are placed on bringing
projects in on budget and on time, and the component that is the easiest to
drop without management realising it has been dropped is the user support
component. These days it is almost always an afterthought and is rarely costed
in the ongoing costs of running business. The person being measured has long
abdicated to the next even higher paying job long before it becomes apparent
that whatever project they were running has failed implementation and is now
requiring massive, costly and mostly fruitless patches.
The debate here is not about how to convince bosses to use logic and thus
ensure good documentation, but how to get organisations to change their ways of
measuring success.
Good luck with that one.
Cheers, Christine
[Description: cid:image001.png@01CE99D3.F9DCA820]
Christine Kent | Technical Communications
Direct: 03 9947 3730 | Tel: 03 9947 3700 | Fax: 03 9947 3701 |
<http://www.hpv.org.au/>
Level 34, Casselden Place, 2 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 3000
www.hpv.org.au<http://www.hpv.org.au/>
Working with Victoria’s health sector to achieve best-value supply chain
outcomes
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Lewis
Sent: Wednesday, 17 December 2014 10:47 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Research on when customers need or want online help or
manuals?
Well put, Stuart.
When I first started working in Technical Communication about 30 years ago, my
chief "selling point" was that documentation is part of the product - not an
optional extra. If you want to think in terms of computer software, you could
say that the documentation is an extension of the user interface, in precisely
the terms described by Stuart. If your product is (say) a washing machine or a
video recorder, the documentation _is_ the user interface, because you can't
put all the relevant information on the fascia surrounding the knobs and
buttons.
Now that I've retired, I just let off steam when I see bad manuals. Recent
examples:
1. An ice cream maker that leaves you scratching your head: do I put the
mixture into the bucket and then put the bucket into the machine before or
after I perform the "pre-cool" process? Strangely, the manufacturer's
representative doesn't seem to know . . .
2. An oven that really needs the door to be removed before you can adequately
clean the inside: no mention of how to do that, or even whether you can do it
at all, though the people who installed a replacement unit (under warranty)
were able to explain it in a matter of seconds . . .
In short, practical experience demonstrates the need for the documentation.
Next problem: users are so accustomed to poor documentation that they don't
expect it to answer their questions. No easy way around that one that I have
found.
- Michael Lewis
On 2014/12/17 18:06, Stuart Burnfield wrote:
Hi Catherine. I don't know of any empirical proof that we need Help or videos
or manuals as things separate from the product.
I find this a useful way to think of documentation:
I, the user/customer, want to accomplish something. Let's say I want to
transfer some money internationally. Ideally, I open the software or web
application and just fill in all the necessary information. It's just a list of
fields but I know what to do and the money is sent securely and correctly as
intended. I don't need to ask any questions, guess at the meaning of any fields
or take any unnecessary steps. The UI is so well defined and the transaction so
well understood that it's just obvious.
In practice, we know that's rarely the case except for very trivial
applications. People need information to help them fill out the form correctly
for their personal situation. It might be my hundredth money transfer or my
first. I might be nervous around computers, or a visitor and unfamiliar with
the local banking jargon. If every bit of potentially useful information were
provided in the form itself, it would be as dense and as long as the phone book.
We need to make this additional information selectively available as users need
it. Putting it in the form is cheap but the available space is limited. 'Space'
in the form of help files, manuals and videos is practically unlimited but it's
expensive to produce and time-consuming and probably frustrating for the user.
If they can't find the answer there, they have to phone or email your support
desk or angrily swear off your company forever--both even more expensive
options.
So the empirical proof you want is the percentage of your clients who can
successfully complete transactions with the aid of Help, videos and manuals
versus the percentage that are successful without them. You need to test and
observe your customers doing representative transactions.
Regards,
Stuart
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