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Subject:RE: Tech docs in a recent movie From:"Wright, Lynne" <Lynne -dot- Wright -at- Kronos -dot- com> To:Keith Hood <bus -dot- write -at- gmail -dot- com>, Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net> Date:Fri, 6 Jan 2017 20:10:48 +0000
HAHAHAHAHA! (I'm looking at YOU, itunes, you monstrous piece of confusion!)
On a more serious note, software designers should consider that "intuitivity" is relative. What seems obvious to one person may leave someone else utterly lost.
For example, having been a long-time Windows user, when I finally bought a Mac, I was pretty befuddled trying to figure out basic stuff ... and some things still make zero sense to me (for example, why do you have to use a keyboard command to access your Library, because for some illogical reason, you can't just access it from the Finder or some menu or other, like everything else? And there is NO way of knowing that without employing a google). There are still tons of features on my laptop and iphone that I don't know how to use, because the help is useless and I can't be bothered to figure out the functionality through a mess of trial and error.
But you take a kid who's grown up using Apple products and they are able to figure out new features pretty quickly.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=kronos -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=kronos -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Keith Hood
Sent: January-06-17 2:32 PM
To: Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Tech docs in a recent movie
According to what I've been told by software designers, pretty soon now they'll be deploying software that's so intuitive there won't be any need for any kind of user-facing documentation.
They've been saying they're going to have that any day now for at least 25 years. I call it the Duke Nukem upgrade.
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> I recently saw the movie Passengers, which is about space travel in
> the future. I enjoyed the movie but it was also remarkable because
> technical documentation figured heavily in the plot. Many scenes
> involved someone grabbing the user manuals for one piece of equipment
> or another, and then following the docs to accomplish something (or
> not!). Several other scenes involved machines talking to the person
> (with a talking 3D face sometimes), telling the person what was
> happening, how to use the space suit, or whatever it was.
>
> So hopefully we'll have work even far into the future! Unless it was
> all automated.
>
> Mark Giffin
> Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.
>http://markgiffin.com/
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