Re: info vs. products

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Wayne -
>
> >Rick says that companies sell products, and good technical
> >communicators inform, rather than instructing, the consumers of
> >the products.  Elna seems to go even farther, saying that the
> >best companies don't even sell products.  They sell information --
> >information directed at meeting the consumers' objectives or
> >solving their problems.
> >
> I think both Rick and Elna have been deliberately provocative for
> pedagogical purposes...

I don't want to respond to the product pitch that was in the rest of
your message, but let me address just the part about my motivation.

If you mean that being provocative "for pedogogical purposes" means
trying to get people to really think about why they're doing what
they're doing, then I plead guilty.  Our motivation in looking at
information this way is because we have concluded that engineering
organizations have perpetuated a mindset where technological devices can
solve people's problems.  In stating this, in its simplest form, they
completely miss the fact that the devices are no good unless (1) people
have a problem that can better be solved using the device(s), and (2)
someone teaches them - or they figure out - how to use the device(s).

What tech writers have been doing for decades now is focusing on (2).
What many engineering companies have done is give lip service only to
(1) and then go on to create bigger/smaller, flashier/less conspicuous,
but overall better devices, on the assumption that their customers will
pay for improved performance, or whatever the metric happens to be.

Information, in the context I'm using the term, is all about identifying
the problem, describing how the device will solve it, and teaching (in
one way or another) the person how to use it.  In many cases, good
design of a device makes learning the product intuitively obvious -
e.g., because we know that objects shaped like a pencil tend to be used
for writing or drawing, that will be our first assumptions about objects
with such shapes. (See Donald Norman's "Design of Everyday Things" for
more examples.)  Which means that *sometimes* you can communicate
information through the design of the product itself.  However in most
cases, words and pictures and demonstrations, which are all forms of
information, are necessary to get the customer to understand why it
makes sense to acquire the product and what problems he'll be able to
better solve with it.

And THAT, in my opinion, is where technical writers should be focusing
their energies.

<end soapbox mode>

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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