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I think for consumer products, these combine to form a "nobody should HAVE
to read a manual to use this" attitude on the part of consumers, and I
can't say that I disagree with that. With today's technology it really is
absurd for somebody to have to read a book, however well-written it may be,
just to get a TV set or cell phone to operate; the darned thing should be
simple enough to get hooked up or connected from a quick-start card and
from that point on it should know or ask you what you want it to do and
then just do it.
For industrial and scientific equipment, this level of user-friendliness is
still years in the distance, but I've seen the seeds of it in some
automated manufacturing systems that are being designed to be operated by
line workers rather than by technicians.
The good news, for anyone who has or can acquire the necessary knowledge to
create them, is that the need for API, install and service documentats for
both consumer products and industrial/scientific equipment has never been
greater or more complex. When I was just getting out of school and looking
for my first job, the idea that it would someday require a 250+ page manual
to repair a telephone would have been laughable.
Gene Kim-Eng
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>wrote:
> Documentation is "going away" for several reasons, either combined or
> stand-alone:
>
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