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Subject:RE: When is it too much information? From:Debbie Hemstreet <D_Hemstreet -at- rambam -dot- health -dot- gov -dot- il> To:yehoshua paul <ysp10182 -at- gmail -dot- com>, tech2wr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 19 Feb 2013 06:36:04 +0000
I think you can best solve this problem by having a section:
Deleted features:
XXX information is no longer displayed in XXX location. The same information can be found XXXX.
In the release notes I write for one of my clients we go for redundancy. Hence, for the above example, under NEW features, we would also have:
XXX information is now accessible only via XXXX (and not in XXX location).
So the user sees where to get the information but also knows that it is no longer displayed in a certain spot. If a user was relying on the displayed information, there will be a support call to find out where the heck the information went to and how do I get it now.
If there is no way to get the information that is no longer displayed -- bad move on the developers part and you need to point this out.
Hope this contributes to the discussion
Deborah
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+d_hemstreet=rambam -dot- health -dot- gov -dot- il -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+d_hemstreet=rambam -dot- health -dot- gov -dot- il -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of yehoshua paul
Sent: Monday, 18 February, 2013 17:07 PM
To: tech2wr-l
Subject: When is it too much information?
While reviewing the latest release notes that my company sends out every couple of weeks, one of the support guys suggested that I add the following words (or something similar) to one of the change descriptions: "The user does not need to do anything." What changed is information that was displayed in one area of the UI is no longer displayed. The support guy thought the users might think they need to do something, now that they no longer see this information.
I told him, if the users needed to do something, I would write this in the release notes like I did with some of the other changes, and include the relevant steps, or the appropriate reference to the online help. If I didn't write anything, why would the users think they need to do something?
His argument was that it doesn't hurt to add the sentence, and it may prevent confused customers from calling customer support.
What do you guys think? Would adding a superfluous sentence (in my opinion) help or hinder users.
Yehoshua
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