In this week’s Autocar magazine, Chris Goodwin bemoans the fact that Daimler AG has taken the romance out of its owner’s handbooks.
He refers to the handbooks for Mercedes cars built in the 1980s, and how they congratulated the owner on their wise decision to purchase an expensive, high quality car:
1980s Mercedes handbook
Here are some initial thoughts on how the new Kindles from Amazon might affect the role of the Technical Author.
Technical Authors know this already – their content needs to work on lots of platforms and across different mediums. It’s more evidence that the layout must not be baked into the content; if the two are controlled separately (by using cascading style sheets to modify and adapt the layout), then we can publish to lots of different devices. Technical Authors do this today, but it’s still worth mentioning.
The Kindle’s new Whispersync for Voice feature means that users can switch between reading and listening. If this extends into the narration of video, in the future, we could see users toggling between text-based content and video tutorials. With the text and the narration synchronised, the video could start from the last word the user was reading. Mozilla’s Popcorn maker project could make this possible across all tablets, not just the Kindle.
Amazon’s X-Ray for movies enables users to navigate and explore a video by characters:
Simply tap on any scene to instantly see which actors are currently on screen, jump straight to other movies in which they star, and more.
Wouldn’t it be great if this could be applied to video-based tutorials? For example, you might stop a clip on installing a product to see which tools you need, and then navigate to the other times when you might also need to use that tool.
Each year, the ability to have hundreds of books on your person, ready to be read at any time, increases. What’s more, with the passive screen technology, people can read “online” material for longer.
The Kindle encourages users to share passages and notes on a book. In the future, it may become the norm for you to read a user manual and share your experience with other readers of the same guide.
What do you think?
According to Hyundai USA
There’s nothing worse than buying a new luxury car only to sit down and have to learn about it through a boring owner’s manual. Thankfully, every Equus comes with a 16GB WiFi Apple iPad, and instead of the boring owner’s manual, the Equus Owner’s Experience app teaches you everything you need to know through demonstration videos, interactive product and safety demonstrations.
Hopefully, you won’t ever need it when you have a flat battery.
Here is an interesting interview between Robert Scoble and Aaron Fulkerson of Midtouch on how MindTouch’s technical communication software is changing how people work together at big companies.
“We started seeing more and more of our customers—Intuit and Microsoft, Intel and Autodesk and Mozilla – launching these documentation communities where they have a body of content for user manuals,” explains Fulkerson. “Just imagine taking ten DVDs of video and text and putting it on the internet for the first time. What does that do for your search engine optimization? And then building a community around that where [customers] can contribute to it. They’re registering with the site, they’re sharing information with you about how you can improve this or that—of course it’s helping lead generation.”
“Enterprise wikis and documentation communities may sound like rather different applications, but Fulkerson asserts that they’re actually the same use case—they’re just applied to two different things. “One is internal around enterprise systems, the other one is external more around social media sites. But they’re both delivering collaboration and social capabilities in a web-based environment that’s connecting systems together.”
Contact us if you’re interested in looking into Mindtouch’s software.
User Generated Content (UGC), that is user documentation written by users, is growing trend in the world of technical communication. However, although there are enormous benefits from UGC, we’ve found it can lead users to miss professionally written user documentation. The consequence of this can be that users search and navigate down blind allies in a search for useful and relevant information.
So is UGC creating a scotoma, or tunnel vision, in the mind of the users?
This blog, by one software vendor, describes a solution for how organisation can host its own powerful content management system “in the cloud” for peanuts. It comes with disclaimers that this is not supported officially by the vendor, but there’s evidence it is possible. Via the comments at the end of the blog post, you’ll discover the original solution has been superseded, but the writer has helpfully provided a rough outline on the best way to do it today.
So the curious user is sent off on a quest to find the complete answer.
The first stop on this quest is the links in the article itself. Because the solution is not supported officially, in this example, the linked pages do not provide the full answer.
So what does the user do next? We found, in most cases, their second step will be to search on Google and see if the solution has been provided anywhere else. In this example, it will lead them to blog articles written by a variety of different people and organisations. This article, by Phil Paradis, for example, provides his solution to the problem.
We found the a key problem with the user generated content in the scenario above, it wasn’t clear whether the advice was still valid or not. A user could spend a great deal of time diving into the murky depths of Linux terminal commands, only to discover eventually that the hosting software part of the solution had been updated to be more user-friendly. What’s more, it now came with very clear user assistance.
There are a number of possible reasons why users are more likely to be ending up looking at the unofficial rather than official documentation:
A lot of software solutions are based on integrating a number of applications and services together, and it’s not uncommon for people to be looking for the type of answer outlined in the example above.
As there are a number of reasons why the problem may occur, so there are a number of possible solutions:
We welcome your thoughts and comments.
We’re presenting on documentation as a emotional experience for users at the TCUK conference later this month, and we’re considering whether we should develop this 40 minute presentation into a workshop.
Technical documentation written today really doesn’t take into account the different states of emotion users can have, and this can lead to users bypassing it completely. It’s important to recognize a user’s “state of mind” and deliver content that is best suited to that state. It may also be useful to use techniques that can transition users from one state to another.
So, would you be interested in a workshop on this subject? Please let us know.
Here is a scan, in actual size, of two pages from a user guide that came with a speaker we purchased this week:
Less isn’t always more, particularly when it comes to the size of the typeface.
Here is a very innovative approach to providing a user guide, from Samsung :
According to Vitamin Design:
These books actually contain the phone. Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone. The second book is the main manual – the phone actually slots into this and becomes the center of attention. Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.
It’s a interesting example of user documentation as an emotional experience. (Thanks to Gareth Williams and Adam Wohl for spotting this.)
Yet another sign that quick reference cards are back in fashion:
Plans to be set out in the Families Green Paper will propose better advice and information for couples and address the balance between work and childcare by considering ways to make public services more “family friendly”.
Under the Green Paper, new fathers will be given a manual to help them adjust to the role.
The “dads’ guide”, put together by the Fatherhood Institute, will include an explanation of breastfeeding and tips on how to support their partner. (Source: BBC News)
The ‘Dads’ Guide To…’ cards are A6 sized quick reference cards printed on both sides with important messages for dads and male carers about their child’s development and how they can get more involved in their child’s life and learning.
Sadly, one question asked by many new fathers remains still unanswered: where do you take the baby’s batteries out?
We often hear from Technical Authors who say they (or their bosses) have concerns about publishing their user guides on the Web. They are worried their competitors might read them, the manuals might stop a prospect from buying the product, or that a client might not buy a support contract.
On the other hand, there are many reasons for publishing user documentation on the Web and having it indexed by the Search Engines. Apart from a better “after sales experience” for customers, it’s great for improving a company’s Search Engine rankings, as Google loves information-rich content.
The good news is that Google does offer a possible solution for these two opposing pressures to be resolved, called “First click free“. According to Google:
While the first article can be seen without subscribing, all clicks on the article page are “trapped.” This means that if users click anywhere else on that page, they’ll be prompted to sign up. This allows our users to view the article of interest while also exposing them to your site, encouraging an actual subscription.
However, it might not be perfect for you. People can potentially go back to Google, find another article from the same site, click to it from Google and read that.
Google is offering additional options for content appearing in Google News search (called Subscription and Preview), but these aren’t available in the main Google Search Engine. Whether they will be added as options for non-news content is unknown.
You can also have content on your Web site that is hidden from Search Engines. Google’s Robots Exclusion Protocol options (robots.txt files or the meta robots tag) offer automatic exclusion from indexing by Search Engines. You can also hide content behind a login screen.
For more information, see Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers.