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Re: Customers who read manuals from cover to cover

Subject: Re: Customers who read manuals from cover to cover
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 17:47:34 -0700

Elna Tymes wrote:



Well, Sean, you never met people from my company. We've done several
unpublished studies of users that showed that people will do many other things
before finally reading the manual.

[snip]

Most, including programmers, will never really *read* the
manual front to back.


Elna's summary is consistent with pretty much every study or piece of anecdotal evidence that I've seen. Personally, I started writing manuals with the assumption that the contents would be scanned rather than read closely a long time ago. Otherwise, I figure that I would be wasting much of my time.

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"Art is a moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television."
-Rita Mae Brown


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References:
RE: Customers who read manuals from cover to cover: From: Brierley, Sean
Re: Customers who read manuals from cover to cover: From: Elna Tymes

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