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Subject:RE: User feedback / meeting the readers etc. From:<ian -dot- saunders -at- vf -dot- vodafone -dot- co -dot- uk> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:53:52 +0100
Chris,
This is EXACTLY our experience.
However, we are lucky in that we provide support documents for staff
elsewhere within our own company, so it is relatively easy to get their
feedback by the only method I have ever found effective: frequent, regular,
meetings.
If you leave it to the users to provide feedback (by phone, e-mail,
snail-mail or whatever) THEY WILL NOT DO IT ("it's not my job", "life is too
short...", "I've done it before and got no response", "I don't know how",
etc., etc.). You have to make it easy for them, and regular, formal
sit-downs with a group of representatives is the best way of doing this.
Occasional one-to-one meetings with users not in this group can also provide
useful input, but the only way to assess the merits and importance of
suggested changes is through group discussion.
Ian Saunders
Vodafone Ltd.
Chris Gooch said:
> We put a page in the back of our manuals which has a quick
> questionnaire on the documentation for readers to fill in and
> send back, questions like "do you feel the manual is
> pitched at the right level technically?", "how do you rate
> the use of examples" and so on.
>
> We've done this for years - it seemed like a good idea
> at the time - but AFAIK we've had no questionnaires
> returned whatsoever. None at all. Zilch.
>
> Now, clearly this means that our manuals are perfect :-)
> but I was wondering if anyone else had ever managed to
> elicit such feedback succesfully. Maybe if we offered a
> free T-shirt or something?
>
> I do get some feedback from 'internal' users, as all our
> manuals are read and used by the developers and support
> staff here -- one trick I have learnt is that if you can get
> any new staff to read the manuals as they are learning
> about the product in their first few weeks, they're the
> next best thing to a tame user.
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