General > General Technical Chat
What Ever Happened to Well Documented User Manuals
rsjsouza:
I used to write technical manuals and application notes for our SW products, as well as the online help guide.
An infinitesimal fraction of people actually took the time to read them, while others missed important details explicitly shown on page 2 of the manual.
After all that, we figured the manuals were much more important to the technical support than to the general public - after all, an answer could be found quite quickly, despite the occasional idio... *ahem* "belligerent customer" that "you shouldn't expect me to read the whole manual" when it was pointed to them the page, section and sometimes the paragraph where the information was present.
This comes as no surprise in general, since even the host of this website prides himself in never reading them... :box:
JPortici:
--- Quote from: jonovid on September 29, 2023, 07:47:46 am ---lots of warnings & compliance logos
--- End quote ---
this is required/mandated
--- Quote ---the heart of the user manual
--- End quote ---
this is not
--- Quote ---is missing
--- End quote ---
and now you know why.
My mother taught me how to write user manuals, she had to do it for her peers and taught me to (try to) do things as self explanatory as possible. I sometimes write manuals and procedure guides for my colleagues, but i just don't bother anymore, it's a waste of time. People on the internet prefer to ask something that they could just google, because they are too lazy to even do that prefer to interact with a human
these are the days in which you are proclamed a professor/know it all/asshole/all the above for having the nerve to suggest people to read the documentation
BeBuLamar:
Money is the reason but if most people would read the manuals and appreciate the manuals then they will provide good manuals. Manufacturers only spend money on things that their customers perceive as value. To many people the manuals have no value and thus to the manufacturers it's not worth it to spend money producing them.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: BeBuLamar on October 02, 2023, 08:07:13 pm ---Money is the reason but if most people would read the manuals and appreciate the manuals then they will provide good manuals. Manufacturers only spend money on things that their customers perceive as value. To many people the manuals have no value and thus to the manufacturers it's not worth it to spend money producing them.
--- End quote ---
Yes but you are summing up the entirety of modern business here. It's not just about manuals, it's the same principle for absolutely everything.
What I'm not completely convinced about anymore is the recurring narrative about how customers drive the offering of businesses through the perceived value.
While this is part of the equation for sure, the other part is the converse. Businesses drive the perceived value of customers via various marketing tricks, sometimes (and these days, more often than not) using regulations as a pretext (for instance: we'll stop providing paper manuals because it's so bad for the planet - for a while, you'll get the same manuals on CD or USB keys, and then manuals just go out of fashion gradually.)
There's also the related, group effect, where the majority of businesses in a given market make the same kind of decisions because they sound trendy and, rather quickly, customers have no choice anymore (nowhere else to turn to), so a given demand disappears for lack of offer. "Demand and offer" is an intricate feedback loop and certainly not a one-way street only as we still hear way too often .
Berni:
--- Quote from: Neilm on October 02, 2023, 06:34:14 pm ---User guides are done by a publicity department that probably don't know what function the unit does anyway, the writer has probably never used one and just got a description of the various controls. The safety warnings are to CYA for the company - I mean draw attention to known hazards and providing the suitable mitigations to these hazards.
I am an engineer and I have written service manuals, but I got the first one I wrote sent back as it was too detailed and potentially revealed company IPO
--- End quote ---
Yep that is ridiculous when 50 years ago manuals often had full schematics of the product so that it could be fixed more easily.
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