Surveying the customer (was Numbered headings)

Subject: Surveying the customer (was Numbered headings)
From: Bevan Mccabe <BMccabe -at- ALTIO -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 11:39:27 +0100

A couple of these posters have mentioned surveying your customers about
numbered headings or fonts.

I think this misses the point of surveying. Such formatting-type questions
are frivolous; a lot of customers would skip these questions, and are a
matter of opinion which you're likely to get inconclusive results from in
any case.

What is important in surveying customers is things like how much knowledge
and experience they have when starting to use your application, and what
sort of examples are relevant to them, do they want a printed or online
manual.

Frivolous questions do you no favors with the customer; they're going to say
"I don't care - you decide".

>>> (quoted msg follows) >>>
To number or not number, depends on what the customer wants. If they want =
10 point Courier with no bold or other formatting. That is what they will =
get, no mater what I may think of the format.

I prefer numbered paragraphs, I find that they are much easer to locate =
paragraphs in documents where the layout and formatting have been given =
some thought. When a document is thrown together nothing (numbers or =
titles) will help much in finding data.

The customer should get what they wants, not what you want.
<<<

righto,
Bevan McCabe
Technical Author, Altio
T: +44(0) 20 8580 4538
F: +44(0) 20 8580 2050
bmccabe -at- altio -dot- com
www.altio.com


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/

+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.com http://www.miramo.com +++

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.


Previous by Author: MS Word page break macro
Next by Author: Quicksilver-Interleaf Support
Previous by Thread: Useless Instructions
Next by Thread: RE: Surveying the customer (was Numbered headings)


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads