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Warren Singer reports: <<My company is thinking of cutting down on costs by
stopping the production of printed manuals. How many of you work for
companies that only provide online documentation?>>
We're currently striking the following balance:
- "here's the overall metaphor for or approach taken by the software, here's
what it looks like, and here's what it can do" goes in print, so users can
have it open on the desk in front of them while they work or read it in the
bathroom before they actually try to run the software.
- "here's what this field means and how this dialog box works and where to
go from here" information goes online as context-sensitive help, so users
can have their questions answered directly where they're encountering the
problem.
- tutorial information is online (in one product) and in-print (in another)
because of the developers' preferences and because I'm doing a small,
informal experiment to see which approach the users prefer. No data yet.
The trick is to successfully match the information type and location to how
and when the users decide to consult the information and whether they can
use the information you provide in that context; if you can do that well
enough with a purely online approach that users succeed more often than they
fail, there's no need for printed documentation. The problem is, it's very
hard to do well, and I've encountered more failures than successes.
<<Is it acceptable in today's market?>>
<rant> It irritates me more than a bit, but who cares what I think? If you
know you've got my money, why would you care whether I want a printed
manual? </rant> Fact is, this approach is becoming increasingly common, even
for applications where it makes no sense to have the information online; for
example, a disk repair utility I recently purchased doesn't even have a
printed "getting started when your computer won't boot" manual, even though
the only time I'm going to use this program is when my hard disk has been
corrupted somehow. D'oh! But where users don't have the option to vote with
their feet (i.e., buy someone else's product), the attitude seems to be that
developers can ignore their preferences and focus on their own needs.
<<The alternative to the printed manual would be to rely solely on the PDF
files that are enclosed in the CDs that we ship with a new release.>>
In my experience, most offices are cluttered with poorly collated printouts
of online help and PDF files. This wastes our time, kills more trees than
necessary, and proves to me that most users still don't like working
primarily with online documentation.
The benefits you list (saving on printing and mailing costs, reducing
production time) are all good ones, but they come at a price: if you haven't
successfully integrated your online material with the application so that
it's more helpful than a printed manual, you're going to alienate your
customers, and if you annoy them enough, they may very well look elsewhere
for products. If the product is basically sound and effective, and everyone
can live with the problems, that's a relatively small risk, but just look at
the magnitude of the anti-Microsoft sentiment and you'll see how people
react when they consider their needs to be ignored.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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