Idiotic Document Design Prize

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

This is nothing to do with the actual writing (which, BTW, is awful), but: 

I bought a gadget to convert songs on vinyl to MP3. It's basically an 
all-in-one turntable, amp, tuner, CD player with a USB port. 

So I'm rarin' to hit the road (*) and I open the skimpy printed manual 
(three sheets of A4 folded in half). Never mind that it's mostly ALL CAPS, 
the writing is poor, the instructions cryptic, and the organisation chaotic. 
The type is TINY! Minuscule! And the last two pages are completely blank! 
Aaarrggh! 

Even if you assume that an extra sheet of A4 would have broken the 
bank, why wouldn't you bump up the text at least a couple of points 
and let it ease comfortably into those existing empty pages at the end? 

Given that this product is aimed at people with collections of vinyl LPs, 
you can safely assume that the target audience is about 140 years old, 
with correspondingly poor eyesight. 

Stuart 

(*) In my case, the middle of the road . 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat