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RE: When all they ever wanted was ....but we gave them a tree
Subject:RE: When all they ever wanted was ....but we gave them a tree From:<WilliamFLawrence -at- eaton -dot- com> To:<kjng -at- gprotechnologies -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:14:09 -0400
Daniel,
A few years ago I was the newly-hired documentation manager for a
software company that made an application to manage the entire business
of large media companies. This was an "enterprise application" that
handled things ranging from media sales to scheduling to accounting. We
had a limited number of very large customers, so I got the bright idea
of polling the entire customer base about the documentation. It seemed
like the perfect project for a summer intern, which I discovered my
predecessor had hired.
It turned out that the users of our enterprise software had some things
in common with your factory workers. Each person using the software,
with the exception of a few managers, interacted with only one of two
"screens" and had limited, repetitive job functions.
What we discovered in our polling, user panels, etc., was that no one
was using the set of user documents that we were producing. No hyperbole
intended. We could find no instance of anyone that had opened a user
guide. In fact, in some cases the customers never even took the manuals
out of the shipping cases. We also had a very complete,
context-sensitive help system integrated with the product. Same story
there: none of the users ever looked at it. However, our help desk
folks and trainers did use the online help to refresh their memories
about less commonly used functions of the application.
We discovered that single-sheet job aids that we had produced after
prodding from the training group were used by most of the user base.
They wanted more of those, and they wanted them laminated to protect
against coffee spills.
The one bright spot was that the customers' IT departments did rely on
our manuals for installation, configuration, and maintenance. However,
most of our writing efforts had been going into user, not
administrative, documentation. So, it appeared that previous to my
arrival and initiating the customer survey, the company had spent seven
years building a lovely set of user guides whose main purpose was to
keep the local print shops in business.
Moral of the story: do your homework with the customer base and find out
what they really need. The feedback you've gotten from your deployment
engineers is a good start. Make some contacts with the customers and let
them guide you.
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