"Granny" instructions

[Krista van Laan <vanlaan -at- BILBO -dot- NTC -dot- NOKIA -dot- COM>]

I was asked to produce some idiot-proof instructions for procedures
that I thought were already documented fairly comprehensively.

I find that I'm not very confident about how much to
include. The customer seems to want _everything_ included -- they
even asked me to spell out all abbreviations and acronyms, even
though abbreviations are used in the menus and windows. (This does
not strike me as a simplification, but it indicates that they want
everything down to the nth detail.)

So sometimes I feel as if I'm describing much too much
(and therefore including a lot of text that will confuse and
eventually bore the user) and other times possibly not enough.

I'm concerned that the procedures will be much too long. I really
dislike seeing 20- or 30-step procedures.

An influencing factor is that the users are not native English speakers,
which may account for some of the difficulties they've had in trying
to follow the existing procedures.

Any thoughts or ideas on this subject? Aside from using clear and
simple English, which of course I'm trying to do.

 ========================================================================
Krista Van Laan                    Phone:   358 9 511 23684
Nokia Telecommunications Oy        Fax:     358 9 511 23554
P.O. Box 320                       Email:   krista -dot- vanlaan -at- ntc -dot- nokia -dot- com
FIN-00045 NOKIA GROUP Finland      Office:  Hiomotie 5 FIN-00380 Helsinki


   If it's about technical communication--post it! If not, don't!
Posts: mailto:techwr-l -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu
Commands: mailto:listserv -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu (e.g. SIGNOFF TECHWR-L)
Archives: http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html,
	http://www.documentation.com/, or http://www.dejanews.com/
Subjects: JOB:, QUESTION:, SUMMARY:, ANNOUNCE:, or none of these.