RE: Documenting installers?

[Jay -dot- Malone -at- ser -dot- com]

To underscore John's point about knowing thy audience:
We were lucky to have end-users in the office every now and then, and we
also had analysts on-site. The Help Desk engineers frequently traveled to
the sites. 
Here's some what I found out about the users: 
*They all had a minimum of a master's degree. (job requirement.)
*They knew a lot  about their subject matter -- the non-technical aspect of
their jobs.
*Turnover was high and pay was mediocre. (= Low motivation toward technical
expertise; little incentive for learning the system.)
*Most were native English speakers. (=informal writing and culturally-based
examples OK)
*Many were ex-military. (expected to adhere to "procedure".) 
*To do the install, they had to have "system administrator" rights.
*To be a sys admin, they had to be the most computer-literate person at
their site.
*Many were the "most literate" because they were the only person at their
site who had a computer at home.
*Many of the users with the fewest permissions needed to be told how to turn
the computer on. Others didn't know the difference between Internet Explorer
and Windows Explorer.

I'm telling you this to show how far off-base my initial assumptions were.
Going into the project, my definition of the technical competency of a sys
admin was way different from what it actually was. I wrongly equated
subject-matter expertise with system expertise. Ain't necessarily so.

(And thanks for the public props, John. :-))

Jay
Jay Malone
independent technical writer and editor,
on-site at SER Solutions, Dulles, VA.



John Posada wrote:

Everyone else..before you think..yeah, but my readers are much more
technical so I don't have to write to the same detail...you don't know
that unless you do a study of your specific users and know exactly what
they are...don't assume that because the product is technical, that the
users "must" be as technical.

I think assuming things about our readers that we don't know for certain
is one of our biggest obstacles to producing quality stuff.



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