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BTW - the product line is train signal equipment. It's mostly hardware, some
software but not much. We can't go into the field because this is a dangerous
environment and the railroads won't take the liability issues. Believe me, I've
been trying.
Each railroad wants us to go thru their 1 day safety training to spend an hour
on their site watching their people install or maintain our equipment. You can
imagine the response to spending a day training for an hour in the field.
The idea that we should find out about our users is a brand new one here,
literally. Like so many places, our engineers "know" who our users are - they're
just like us! So write docs the product engineers like and that will meet our
users needs. Except every place I have ever heard that, it turned out to be not
true. I suspect it to be the case here and want to find out just who these users
are.
This questionaire is a first step. Please keep the specific ideas coming!
Quoting Brian Jennings <BrianJennings -at- cougarmtn -dot- com>:
> We've had a similar questionairre for quite some time and it has been
> useful. I think one of the most useful questions has been asking what type
> of learning they prefer (examples, step-by-step, tutorials, attempting the
> task themselves etc.) We also include a question about their
> troubleshooting
> process (most check the online Help first). Other than that I'd recommend
> coming up with your "typical" user and ask questions that will confirm or
> deny these assumptions. If you imagine a technical user ask questions to
> make sure the writing level will be appropriate.
>
> HTH
>
> Brian
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