"They don't need no stinkin' documentation..."

[Michele Marques <MarquesM -at- autros -dot- com>]

Bruce writes (in defense of doc design):
> 
> However, if you're writing for more casual users, then design 
> could be the difference between them reading the 
> documentation and walking away from all your hard work. It 
> doesn't matter how good your content is if people can't or 
> won't use it.
> 

But if the content is wrong, or leaves out important points so that the
reader can easily get the wrong impression or do dangerous things, then
having your document easy-to-use doesn't matter. It just means people will
find the wrong information faster, or will be more likely to use your docs
to get the wrong impression.

I do agree, however, that there is a point to design. And it is a strawman
to determine whether you should spend 100% effort on content vs 100% effort
on design.

It is more useful to ask at what point do you have enough accurate content
that you should spend some time on design. 

For example, if you have 80% of the content written accurately, it might be
time to apply some basic design principles. Until you have all the content
in place, you shouldn't be spending lots of time on layout. But if you have
a document (perhaps you inherited lots of content) that has no headings, no
table of contents, and all procedural instructions are in long paragraphs
(that could be broken up into numbered steps), it might be time to make a
quick formatting pass and generating a table of contents. 

If the design is so bad that only the truly desperate will read
documentation (and then only when Support is unavailable), then the last 20%
of content (assuming it is the least necessary 20%) might not be worth
making that 80% slightly easier to access.

If the design is really bad (as implied by Andrew's formula of "good content
+ bad design = marginal doc"), you could turn this into an adequate
document. A good document would have all the content in place and, perhaps,
further improved design. An excellent document would have great content and
great design.

      - Michele
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michele Marques, Technical Communicator
AUTROS Healthcare Solutions, Inc.
marquesm -at- autros -dot- com <mailto:marquesm -at- autros -dot- com> 
 
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