Re: Great piece on marketing collateral
The point is not to force the user (or the buyer in the article) to read all the documentation. The point is to re-evaluate who the audience for each type of material is, what materials are required, and where in the process the materials are best provided.
In the marketing example, it would seem that the majority of the material is not pertinent to the audience (the buyer) and much of the material that is pertinent to the process is directed at the wrong audience (best provided to the sales force not the potential buyers).
In the case of technical documentation, is the user the correct target for the information if a majority won't RTFM?
First, I didn't say anything about a majority. _Some_ people won't read
a given document even if they would be well served by reading it. The
percentage varies with the situation and the audience. But I agree with
you that it is the writer's job to figure out what the right documents
are for the audience's needs.
If the users don't read what you produce and they won't make the correct choices based on your instruction/information set you've failed completely as a technical communicator. If tech support has to field all the calls for information that is found in the manuals, why bother printing and delivering them? If sufficient numbers of users are not directed and aided by the information delivered by techpubs, the department is useless to the company and should rightly be disbanded.
No. If _some_ users don't read what you produce, etc., you have not
failed completely. There has been a partial failure, and it is probably
not something that can be blamed on anyone in particular. If someone in
the control room at a nuclear power plant has failed to read and
understand required materials, yes, we can blame the employer for
letting that person into the room. But in the course of everyday life in
most businesses, the controls are a lot sloppier than that. Do _you_
want your boss quizzing you to find out if you memorized the manuals for
all the programs you use? Didn't think so. We're all flooded with so
much material that we tend to pick and choose; and if choose to read a
software manual instead of the new business management bestseller my
boss wants me to read, that's not a failure on my boss's part. By the
same token, if he doesn't want to take the time to read how to use the
software on his laptop and would rather have someone else figure it out,
that's not a failure on my part.
Dick
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