RE: When they shouldn't be experimenting (was RE: Encouraging learning---g by experimentation?

["Mike Bradley" <mbradley -at- techpubs -dot- com>]

> If I leave out the "clutter"...I get reasonable-sounding 
> complaints that we must tell the users the information that 
> they need in order to make decisions... and to keep 
> themselves out of trouble... and away from the Customer 
> Support line....
> 
> If I put in the "you need to know this" info, between the 
> steps, I get complaints that:  "It's hard to follow. The 
> flow is interrupted. I want it all on one page..."

Seven words. I think it was in a recent IEEE Transactions that a study
found that users rarely read more than the first seven words of a step
in a how-to procedure. They don't read additional paragraphs in the step
and they stop altogether after just a few steps--I forget how many, but
it might have been five.

Heck, I don't want to read any more than that myself, not when I'm
trying to get something done.

= Mike Bradley
  Tech Pubs



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