User feedback / meeting the readers etc.

[Sean MacRae <sean -at- rcp -dot- co -dot- uk>]

Chris,

Maybe they didn't spot it -- one consultant wrote that he had a test when he
went into a client site and he spotted a manual on the shelf. He waited
until he was alone, then stuck a fairly large denomination banknote into it.
When he returned to the site on a follow-up visit, he'd check that the
banknote was still there.

Claimed he hadn't lost one yet.

I'm glad I read that *after* I sweated blood on my first user manual...

In a serious answer to your question, you can try to meet the users and ask
them for their opinion. Site visits are great but expensive, but we also
used to run regular user group meetings -- feed them up, get them to relax,
give them some useful information and then ask them for their opinion.

The good thing was we also got positive feedback -- the after sales feedback
you get through support is mostly negative, and it's nice to hear people say
"yes, there are minor problems, but we really like the software".

We also took the engineers along (suitably spruced-up); I'll never forget
the look on their faces when I demonstrated that ALT+Tab allowed you to
switch from our software into a running copy of Word; I was asked to hold on
as almost the entire audience frantically scribbled this nugget down.

"What? They don't even know *that*?" But having met them, they couldn't
dismiss them as dumb users. Especially as many of them were respected
academics and journal editors...

Cheers,
Sean
 
> Subject: User feedback / meeting the readers etc.
> From: Chris Gooch <Chris -at- lightwork -dot- co -dot- uk>
[...]
> We put a page in the back of our manuals which has a quick
> questionnaire on the documentation for readers to fill in and
[...]
> 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?
[...]

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