Re: No one reads the manuals

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

Bruce Conway wrote:

> In my experience (Help Desk - 7 years(of innocent "bliss")), people
> normally do the following (in sequence):
>
> 1. panic
> 2. ask a co-worker
> 3. phone the Help Desk (if they can get through)
> 4. try the online help
> 5  find somebody with a manual (in the large corporation where I worked
> - the one that makes your home telephones - they did not issue manuals)
> 6. panic (again)
> 7. put on their coat and go home early (giving you, the Help Desk guy, a
> bit of a "look"
>     on the way out

Interesting.  In my experience, people do the following:

1. Play with the screen, trying to get something to happen.
2. Ask a co-worker.
3.  IF they have previously used online Help and know that it can be helpful, try
the online Help.
4.  Phone the Help Desk.
5. Check the training handouts, if they were given training.
6.  Check the manual.

> In my opinion, the "manual" makes a good substitute for a formal
> training course (with limitations of course).  I relied very heavily on
> the MS Word manual when learning Word.  I'm also told the RoboHelp
> Tutorial will give you about 80% of what you need (of course I don't
> believe that, otherwise DK would get mad at me, but ....)

For a lot of people it does. For a lot of folks, however, a manual is only good
for topical material - which means that the Table of Contents and index are very
important to them.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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