Re: waking up to the world of Technical Writing

["Mark Baker" <listsub -at- analecta -dot- com>]

> A poorly designed instrument panel makes you look all over the place, peer
> around the steering wheel to see the speedometer or gas guage, and
> generally spend much too long with your eyes *off* the road.  A well
> designed instrument panel makes it easy for you to take in all the
> information you need in the least possible time.

Exactly! The instrument panel is peripheral. For heaven's sake, it is even
located in area of the driver's peripheral vision. The correct design of the
instrument is vital precisely because it is peripheral. It has to be
readable at a quick glance without taking your eyes off the road. If you
design an instrument panel on the assumption that it is supposed to be
central to the driving experience, you will get it hopelessly, dangerously
wrong. You need to understand that its function is peripheral if you are
going to design it right.

> Clearly we have different definitions of "user experience."  For me, it
> includes every moment the user is interacting with the software, from
> before installation through the last time she shuts it down.

Absolutely we have a different definition. Unless your product is a video
game, the user does not set out to "use the software". They set out to do a
job. What is central to their experience is the task that they are trying to
accomplish. If you approach the design of your system with the idea the
system is central to the user's experience you are already hopelessly on the
wrong track.

Now, you might say, no, you meant the user's experience of the software
specifically. But that becomes tautologous: the UI is central to the users
experience of the UI, the doc is central to the user's experience of the
doc, and so on. The question you have to ask, if you want to get any of the
design right, is what does the user think is central to their experience,
and that is their task.

This distinction is a very important one. Consider the case of a reader who
sits down to read a novel. The text of the novel is central to the user's ex
perience. It's the thing they came for. It is the job of the novel to grab
the reader's attention and hold it. Contrast this with the worker who pulls
out an instruction manual. The manual is not central to the user's
experience. His task is. The job of the manual is to tell him what he needs
to know and get him back to his task. The novel is central and should be
designed to be central. The manual is peripheral and should be designed to
be peripheral.
---
Mark Baker
Analecta Communications
www.analecta.com
+1 613 614 5881


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