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Subject:Re: Dummies books and more on "Idiot Audience" From:Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:15:17 -0800
Bob Morrisette wrote:
> Those who are put off by the Dummies label should consider
> the content and purpose of the book more carefully.
The Dummies books came about because there was a need for them.
Publishers make carefully calculated guesses about the audience for a
book before signing an author and plunking down the money necessary to
create and market the book. The largest of the technical book
publishers (Sybex, Que, et al) run ongoing focus groups and other market
measurement activities to make sure that what they're doing makes market
sense. While the first of the Dummies books was a seat-of-the-pants
guess by Peachpit Press, the other publishers recognized a major need
and climbed on the bandwagon after their own market research confirmed
the observations.
Dummies books aren't written for the truly stupid. They are written for
ordinary people who are trying to use a software tool to do something
productive. Among other things, they're great experimental grounds for
balancing a light tone with hard-core techie details, for use of
graphics, for white space/text ratios, for page design, for different
forms of quick-reference material, etc.
One of the reasons they're so popular, say the publishers, is that these
ordinary people have been made to FEEL stupid by instructions or
interfaces that are utterly baffling. In our working so tightly with
engineers and programmers and other developers, many of us lose sight of
the original audience's characteristics and tend to assume that they
know as much about a particular tool as the technical people do.
We may make fun of the person in the 'urban legend' who had so much
trouble getting the plastic cover off the floppy disk, but remember that
this was yet another person who was taking the instructions literally.
