How to Write User-Facing Instructions
Long before joining MIPRO I used to write software documentation. As part of the process, we had some pretty spirited debates about our assumptions for these training guides. Do you assume the users know anything about accounting? Do you assume they know the industry? Do you assume they are college educated? Do you assume anything?
Obviously, in order to keep the user manuals manageable and useful, we had to make certain assumptions about the people who would be using them. This sounds easy on paper, but it’s actually a rabbit hole that goes much deeper than you might expect.
There is a long-circulating urban legend about a woman who mistook ‘cruise control’ for ‘auto pilot’ as it relates to her Winnebago motor home. It’s a false story (despite it appearing in annual Stella Awards lists), but we’ve all heard stories about how companies suffer at the hands of incompetent or dangerously ignorant customers before. (Remember Liebeck v. McDonald’s and how it forced McDonald’s to use larger and clearer messaging that its coffee is hot and may cause burns?)
Here’s the Winnebago urban legend, summarized:
This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her — are you sitting down? — $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed its manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.
Hyperbolic? Yes. False? Yes. A symptom of a problem that’s out there in spades, one that’s not so funny and forces companies to have long discussions about what assumptions it can make with regard to user manuals, warnings and other product documentation? Also yes.
So user manual assumptions – or lack thereof? Yeah, they’re pretty important. Consider this next time you sit down to put to paper the parameters of your documentation efforts.
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More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
