|
In my experience, most of the time they rely on their own experience and expectations. If a problem occures, they call us directly. Manuals are useless.
Behzad
|
|
|
|
|
just me being nitty picky, kind of looking over the options and thinking instructions are steps of notes for HOW to use product. where documentation can include sections for many things. As such can provide documentation that have no instructional section in it.
Web page email service - documentation might include some added things like shortcut keys and things, but to include a beginners section of how to use http web page.
consider some recent lego purchases, which have a few pictures to show using that oranage remove tool, but the instruction documentation has nothing in the way of what type of plastics, and formed, what machine produced the parts, where as software documentation might focus more on what technologies underlie and licensing (🤔lego does plaster copyright license if licensed model)
another case, Photoshop - more user generated single tool specific guides, with varied success of usefulness then what "official" adobe instructions can possibly hope to make. Not so much a time cost, but limitation cost. user created "here how to make that star wars wipe" - corporate lawyers, yeah we can't reference star wars without licensing it.
then you have type that make a hand screwdriver, and due to something or another, need to make instruction pictures how to use screw driver😓
|
|
|
|
|
We use videos, not documents.
Graeme
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks one time, but I fear the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times!" - Bruce Lee
|
|
|
|
|
Videos are documents.
If they are of professional quality, they may be tolerable for a very first introduction, as instructional videos for elementary use. When you run into problems, error situations, crashes, ... - or you have a complex task way beyond the "101 Elementary use" course, searching for the answer in a pile of videos is wasting huge amounts of time, compared to glancing through the table of contents or index table in a (printed or electronic) text document.
Most video documentation anno 2022 (and the ten preceding years) are not of "professional quality", and poorly suited to anything but the elementary introduction.
(An example of video documentation that is of professional quality, serving as valuable elementary introduction: Most people who have used the 'SketchUp' 3D drawing system has taken their first great leaps into the system through the large set of short, pointed, no-frills videos showing how to use each of the basic tools and techniques. Without these, lots of users would never have really gotten into SketchUp, and would have soon rejected it.)
|
|
|
|
|
That's even worser. 
|
|
|
|
|
The program I work on used to have superior documentation. Developers and Support would use it all the time to look things up. However, when we were bought by a Fortune 500 company, the person that maintained the documentation left. It hasn't been updated since (7 years now). Fortunately, they were only having us create new things and not messing with the old stuff, so the 7 year old documentation is still current enough. I still use it to look up things every now and then.
Of course, the people in Support are all new at this point except for 1, who is way past retirement age. She can still run loops around everyone else in Support because she knows that documentation inside out and the others aren't even sure what documentation is.
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
|
|
|
|
|
... and then read it to the users in a meeting. 
|
|
|
|
|
Software Zen: delete this;
|
|
|
|
|
I have a colleague who always calls/emails us saying they got the "red error" instead of reading what the error message is, as if the other errors had other kinds of colours...
|
|
|
|
|
If someone tried that with me, I would probably talk to their boss about the reason they were still employed with us. Our product is a very complex commercial ink-jet printing system with lots of complicated hardware. There are well over 1,000 informational, warning, and error messages. We give the users a short message identifier of the form "AAA####" along with the text, so there's no excuse for telling us precisely what they are seeing.
Software Zen: delete this;
|
|
|
|
|
Ages ago, I was teaching an office automation course, advanced level with macro programing and such, to office users who had been using typewriters up until six months earlier, when the computer arrived and typewriters were replaced with terminals. This was before PCs - the terminals were character only, with RS232-lines to the machine.
These course participants were very dissatisfied with the terminals: If you enter the setup (e.g. to select national character set), and make a mistake, you have to do it all anew, there is no way to cancel what you just did!
I didn't grasp it: These terminals (TDV 2215) had an excellent menu based configuration system, multi-level, and you could revert your changes at any level. I asked them to show me the problem.
So they opened the configuration system, made a change and hit ESC three times before I could stop them. I was too late in my "Stop it - There!
"That's the way to set it up - we learned that at the introduction course. You end it by hitting ESC three times."
"But didn't you see that 'undo changes' option, after both the first and the second ESC?"
"No ... is there anything there? I just did as we learned to do: Three times ESC."
So I repeated the change, hitting ESC once, and the ladies exclaimed "Wow!"s and cheers when I selected 'Undo' to go back and make another choice. Then I repeated the same operation at the outer level, after having pressed ESC twice, going into another submenu to make a second change before finally committing the entire batch of changes with the third ESC.
That made me the hero of the day. They were so impressed by how advanced these computers and screens are! Learning to notice the 'Undo' option before hitting ESC raised the terminals from being a bother to a great device!
When did this happen? At the very start of the 1980s, I guess. But users haven't changed much, even though the tools may be more complex. It has little to do with education level: I have had very similar experiences with my coworkers, generally master level graduates, needing my help to find a command in that in-house tool I was maintaining: Oh, is it located in that submenu? Well, now that you tell me, it is the natural place ... So it has nothing to do with education level. But with laziness.
|
|
|
|
|
At least your customer recognizes it as an error.
I got a call "our import doesn't work."
Checked their import and sure enough an error had occurred.
In only two sentences, on a red background, I explain the error and how to solve it.
They ignored it, went on with their day, and called me a day later because "it didn't work"
|
|
|
|
|
I get that one too.
I miss using CRT's for displays. I always wanted to get a hardware guy to connect the high voltage supply in the monitor to the keyboard through a relay under software control.
User-friendly my ass; I wanted user-lethal.
Software Zen: delete this;
|
|
|
|
|
In the past we've provided user training, which helped. We also supplied documentation and videos.
|
|
|
|
|
I once had to produce documentation for an application written in MS-Access. I printed out the database documentation provided by Access. But this documentation was not enough, so I just printed it out 3 times and put everything in a binder.
Everybody happy 
I'm guessing that they never read it...
|
|
|
|
|
Since when do applications nowadays (especially web applications) come with instructions? And no, many basic web applications are not intuitive enough to exclude the need for instructions. Even I struggle with some supposedly simple to use web apps. 
|
|
|
|
|
Nope, they're not gonna read it. We and they rarely do.
|
|
|
|
|
Management insisted I include an online user's guide on my application. I added the user's guide, but added code to document anytime the document was accessed. After 1 year, it has been accessed 2 times. And I think 1 of these time was me making sure it worked.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage
|
|
|
|
|
Life taught me otherwise ...
“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
|
|
|
|
|
The customer asked for it, so we wrote some documentation.
They never read it.
Then they wanted the documentation to be embedded in the software.
So we made some help buttons that went to the specific page in the document.
They never read it.
We did though, they'd call with an issue, I'd fire up the software, click the help button and simply read to them what it said.
It answered their question most of the time 
I even told them where to find it, but it's apparently just easier to call me.
I've seen and wrote so many unread documentation that I've stopped doing it altogether unless there's a specific request.
My software is custom made for my customers, so it's intuitive to them anyway.
|
|
|
|
|
Many years ago ... when a thick handbook followed the software, no matter matter what kind of software, I was working in an office landscape where I could easily hear conversations on neighbor desks. Next to me sat this guy on Fortran support, and one day when his phone rang, I overheard his conversation - his side of it only:
Yes ... Hmm ... Yes ... Say, have you got the Fortran manual handy? ... Could you open it on page 142? ... Could you read out to me the first paragraph on that page? ... ... Oh, that's nothing, that's what support is for! Have a good day!
The fun thing is that this support guy never picked up his own copy of the Fortran manual to check the page number or paragraph text. Yet he was able to make the day for at least one customer.
But then: I am so old that looking for some printed documentation lies in my blood. But then: Sometimes when I find 'documentation', it is so horribly bad that I can't make heads or tails out of it. I have to throw it away and search for hints and tips from other users on the Internet. So I can, sort of, understand those users having given up printed documentation altogether. A lot of it deserves to be thrown away (whether printed on paper, provided as 'help pages' on the Internet, or as builtin help in the application).
|
|
|
|
|
Printed on paper? What's that? 
I think the problem with a lot of documentation now is that I send it to my customers and they simply forget it exists, or where it is.
Some customers have some intricate folder structure that no living soul could ever unearth, others have to search their email for that document you sent them three years ago.
Of course you had that problem with, what did you call it, "printed paper", as well.
But there are usually only so many places for paper to be in an office.
|
|
|
|
|
Happens with other devs too. They ask me about code I wrote 8 months ago, and gloss over the comments that explain it. That's why I don't comment my code anymore.
|
|
|
|
|
The user didn't even check to see if the installation included instructions ...
And writing user manuals is difficult! And time consuming! And ... you might have well sat on a beach for the month it took then copy'n'pasted Lorem Ipsum with a couple of pretty pictures instead.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec leo justo, sollicitudin ut libero a, mattis vulputate nisi. Nunc sit amet lorem neque. Phasellus placerat accumsan accumsan. Suspendisse posuere, risus et luctus tempor, purus magna eleifend nibh, vehicula gravida metus metus et libero. Nunc a sagittis orci, nec posuere diam. Ut laoreet orci sem, vel vehicula lacus pharetra eleifend. Donec posuere luctus massa, porttitor gravida lacus. Maecenas tempor risus eget nisi maximus ultricies. Vestibulum at volutpat ante. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Nulla et elit lacus. Maecenas tempor auctor risus, eu malesuada ipsum commodo id. Integer id urna ac odio finibus bibendum. Integer dictum tortor a justo posuere auctor. Praesent molestie varius sem, eu porttitor enim. Donec suscipit elementum lacus vitae scelerisque.
Proin id diam sed metus dapibus ultricies non in lorem. Fusce fringilla ultricies velit, sit amet finibus est imperdiet id. Fusce id tincidunt libero. Pellentesque cursus urna ut suscipit lacinia. Phasellus varius volutpat nisl, et pellentesque arcu commodo vitae. Ut accumsan tempus convallis. Praesent laoreet ex eu lacus tempus pharetra. Nulla tempus arcu in leo dictum sodales.
Donec vel nibh ut augue tempus porttitor. Cras vehicula dui id nisi dignissim egestas. Vivamus vel dui lacus. Aliquam eget nulla et neque auctor aliquam in sed sapien. Aliquam mollis maximus nisl nec sagittis. Nunc volutpat ultrices enim ultrices ultrices. Ut a mauris sem.
Sed nec fermentum dui. Vestibulum ut consectetur leo, ut fringilla orci. Proin vitae ex quis ante ultrices tincidunt. Aliquam commodo porta eleifend. Morbi congue ultricies faucibus. Proin id sapien mauris. Vestibulum a metus laoreet, dignissim urna quis, aliquam odio. Praesent risus purus, venenatis quis dolor euismod, suscipit venenatis ante. Integer sit amet imperdiet eros, at aliquam risus. Etiam sed aliquam sapien, vitae ultricies justo. Nullam in ex volutpat, semper enim tincidunt, eleifend odio. Aenean in auctor nunc. Duis hendrerit urna et turpis ultrices maximus. Maecenas viverra neque dignissim ligula volutpat gravida. Nulla id dolor quis libero fringilla ultrices eget eu lectus.
Suspendisse potenti. Sed eu tristique arcu. Pellentesque sodales sem vel aliquet molestie. Nam ut vestibulum erat, eget elementum dolor. Praesent consequat lorem in magna tincidunt, in elementum lacus tristique. Vivamus feugiat, eros vitae tempus congue, odio tellus placerat elit, ac commodo neque turpis eu nulla. Integer id lacus venenatis nunc mollis bibendum. In mauris neque, varius quis placerat sed, sodales in ligula. Nam orci magna, aliquet eget leo vitae, varius dignissim magna. Mauris nec mi at felis dictum laoreet at in neque.
I'm so tempted to use that as part of my next QA reply to see if anyone actually reads those ... or this ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
|
|
|
|
|
tldr; was that something about the customer being important? 
|
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
