Warnings?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Looks like I started a bit of a tempest here. Really, my intent wasn't to
imply in any way that all warning messages are dumb. I just found a few
randomly sampled ones in the electronics section amusing, and didn't explore
the site as a whole (I'm at work, after all). I confess, I did facetiously
express my hope that none of us would find ourselves in the "hall of shame".
Mea culpa.

Back to business: Bryan Johnson continued the thread by noting that: <<Not
to sound elitist, but I think we need to remember that the vast majority of
the world's population operates at a less than fourth grade education level.
The warnings that were posted on this site were... written for the
uneducated masses.>>

That's not so much elitist as realist, though I'm sure someone will flame
you for not expressing the same sentiment more diplomatically. Fact is, we
techwhirlers really are overeducated compared with the "average", though the
actual grade level attained by that average is debatable. It's also clear
that the world is "full" of stupid people, including the legislators who
have allowed multi-million dollar damage awards. More importantly, each of
us, however educated, regularly commits at least one act of sheerest
stupidity--such as the time I inadvertently spammed techwr-l with a 4-Meg
PageMaker file. (FERIC's Pegasus e-mail software was nominally responsible;
our message databases regularly became corrupted, and mail regularly got
misaddressed. But then again, I didn't double-check the address line, did
I?)

The problem for us lies in determining what represents an unforseeable
hazard, and recognizing that even foreseeable hazards may inspire lawsuits
in today's legal environment. The notion that freshly made coffee is hot
should be forseeable by anyone who's ever tasted a hot drink, irrespective
of age or education, and spilling coffee is one of life's little risks we
can only hold ourselves responsible for. That's _not_ the same as producing
a dissolving paper cup that abruptly releases the whole drink into your lap.
Before anyone brings up the McDonalds case, please note that the damages in
that case were high because McDonalds had repeatedly ignored legal warnings
to lower the temperature of their coffeemakers, not because the woman
unwisely chose to pour the coffee onto her lap.

<<Now for the Techwr-l tie-in... Keeping your audience in mind (the general
audience at any professional wrestling, or big truck show) would you have
written these warnings any differently?>>

The real problem is that we all know people who don't read manuals, and thus
never see our warnings; anecdotal evidence suggests they're the majority of
our supposed audience. Much though we think we're doing these readers a
service by writing clear and inoffensive warnings in our manuals, we're
doing nobody any good if they never read the warnings. In any situation that
we feel requires a warning, the real problem is that we've actually
discovered a usability problem with the product we're documenting. Such
problems can only be solved by fixing the product.

Obviously, we can't often convince designers to make these changes, but it's
still our ethical responsibility to clearly explain the problem to someone
who can fix it, propose a solution (if we're tech-savvy enough), and ensure
that the responsible managers have been notified. Writing warnings are a
cover-your-ass measure, not a solution, and it's time everybody realized
this. We realize this, and thus, it becomes our responsibility to advocate
for change, even when we know the odds of success are low. That's
particularly true if human injury or suffering can result from the flawed
product. A fight's no less worth fighting just because it's difficult, and
the world would be a better place if each of us could persuade product
developers to think more about the users of their products.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is
noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience,
which is the bitterest."--Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478
BCE)

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