Re: Generation Y doesn't like paternal delivery of user ed?

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

I know exactly what you mean. It's like that old story about the pianist who was a bad teacher because he was such a good player. He could show a beginner where to place the hands, but he couldn't *tell* the beginner, because the motions had become so automatic he no longer had to actively think about where his fingers went.

The more I write and the more I learn about the thing I'm documenting, the harder it gets to remember the difference between what I know and what a novice would know. To get around that, I hired a friend of mine who knows nothing about technical writing. She never uses the products I work with, so she knows nothing about them except what she sees in my documents. Sometimes I pay her a little to test-drive the docs, to see if they will meet the needs of someone brand new to the product. $20 here and there - it's well worth it and I can deduct it as a business expense.


--- On Mon, 6/16/08, Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> wrote:

> From: Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>


> > We may not have to write to the lowest common
> denominator, but I do 
> > think we need to watch out for our assumptions, and
> the things that have 
> > become so automatic for us in using a particular
> program we don't think 
> > about it any more.
> 
> 
> Staying focused on the user's requirements is hard for
> me when I'm 
> getting more and more experienced at doing what I'm
> writing about. The 
> temptation to work from memory gets in the way instead of
> continuously 
> referencing and validating the instructions. 


      
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