atw: Re: The user guide from hell
- From: Kath Bowman <Kath.Bowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 09:02:42 +1030
The worst user manual I came across was for a digital video recorder. All
through the instructions, it kept telling me what to do if things did not work
as expected. It was hard going, and each task took several pages to describe.
It was full of “If this happens…” followed by “If that happens…” There were no
simple steps to follow to do a task. I didn’t encounter any of the problems
they described. They should have used simple step-based procedures, followed by
trouble-shooting sections.
However, the recorder was as badly designed as the manual, and I got rid of the
recorder (and the manual) after a while.
Cheers
Kath
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Silcock
Sent: Thursday, 1 March 2012 10:38 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: The user guide from hell
It occurred to me (while looking at the online user guide provided for our
phone system and thinking about others that I've seen for home appliances) that
it might be an interesting and instructive exercise to come up with the
attributes of a 'user guide from hell'.
Some that occur to me immediately are:
1. It applies to a number of different models, which are distinguished only
by a very hard-to-find identifier on the product or its packaging, and which
have quite different configurations. Pictures (and all the most useful
features) all relate to one of the models you don't have.
1. It contains text in a very large number of languages. The English version
is somewhere right in the middle and appears to be much shorter than many of
the others. It's written by someone with very little knowledge of English.
1. Most of the text consists of warnings against using the product in the
most bizarre ways (like the user guide for an iron which warned against ironing
clothes while you're wearing them) and is clearly there only to guard against
lawsuits.
1. Other topics given prominence are congratulations on buying the product
and promotions for other products.
1. Instructions are grouped under headings that presumably make sense to the
manufacturers but are meaningless to the users and often use jargon (e.g.
'Softkey Definitions' - most users would have no idea what a 'softkey' is - or
'Utilities' or 'Advanced Topics'). There's no index or table of contents.
1. Alternatively (or in addition) there's a picture of the product with a
large number of numbered callouts and the only instructions are listed in the
key to the callouts.
1. There are references to other publications from a website. That website
doesn't exist.
Any other suggestions?
Howard
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