25 Nov 08: "Read rage" over manuals
Yelling and throwing things.
These may be behaviors of cranky preschoolers and temperamental Hollywood divas. They are also reactions of readers to bad documentation, according to a survey conducted by "The TechGuys", a UK-based technology support provider, and reported by
Channel 4.
The TechGuys survey of more than 1,500 consumers revealed that nearly 40% of the respondents became so irate that they yelled with frustration due to the over-complicated nature of instructions. And one in five even threw the offending manual across the room.
Linguist David Crystal, who was quoted in the Channel 4 report, elaborated on the problems that lead to "read rage" in
his own blog post on the subject. These are likely to be familiar to professional tech writers. These are the demons we battle daily:
- thick manuals with only a few pages in English
- one manual covering multiple models, making it difficult to find relevant information
- manuals only available online, when the product itself must work in order to get online
- small print in general and illegible labels in diagrams
- online documents with dense paragraphs and poor page navigation
- manuals written by non-native English speakers, and never edited by native speakers
- long complex sentences
- poorly ordered procedures
- missing explanations, such as for product variations, or product handling
- instructions that are culturally inappropriate or just plain nonsensical
The job of technical writers is to produce information that is easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to find. If our employers don't provide us with the resources to do our jobs, then our jobs become to obtain those resources. I don't recommend yelling and throwing things as a persuasive strategy, but if your customers are doing it, maybe management needs to see that.
Category: Writing | Posted by: jmswisher
Comments
28 Nov 08, 07:43:12 Ellis Pratt wrote:
Small point - Channel 4 isn't part of the BBC.
28 Nov 08, 07:48:12 Janet Swisher wrote:
Thanks Ellis. My American ignorance is showing. I stand corrected, and have corrected the post.
13 Dec 08, 08:43:57 Milan Davidovic wrote:
We probably wouldn't have these problems if we weren't demanding cheaper products.
15 Dec 08, 22:33:53 Vishnu wrote:
"manuals written by non-native English speakers, and never edited by native speakers."
This is because of the following:
1. Most of the technical writers in non-English speaking countries are hired by managers who do not know anything about technical writing.
2. A few clients are reluctant to appoint technical editors offshore and never make arrangements for a proper review of documents.
3. There is an inherent bias that the quality of documents written by non-native speakers will be bad.
4. There is no effort to discover good writers and editors in non-English speaking countries.
5. Clients shift inferior technical writing work to non-English speaking
countries. Examples include sales and marketing collaterals. A few companies send documents that are much worse than those written by non-native writers.
16 Dec 08, 01:25:24 David Farbey wrote:
Vishnu wrote: "Most of the technical writers in non-English speaking countries are hired by managers who do not know anything about technical writing."
I think that plenty of technical writers in English speaking countries are hired by managers who don't know anything about technical writing either. They are hired reluctantly, if at all, by managers who see them as an unavoidable cost that has to be minimised, rather than as an integral part of the development effort. That means that even serious, diligent, professional technical writers have a hard time getting the resources to do their jobs well.
I've been running my own survey on people's views of user documentation, and I'll be publishing the results early next year. I will try and get hold of the Tech Guys survey results to see if I can compare data.
05 Feb 10, 20:42:25 Love poetry wrote:
I think that plenty of technical writers in English speaking countries are hired by managers who don't know anything about technical writing either. They are hired reluctantly, if at all, by managers who see them as an unavoidable cost that has to be minimised, rather than as an integral part of the development effort. That means that even serious, diligent, professional technical writers have a hard time getting the resources to do their jobs well.
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