Introduction. Writing manuals for products is difficult, thankless work

Writing manuals for products is difficult, thankless work. A good manual clearly explains every single function of the product in question, and does so in terms the product’s intended audience can clearly understand. For complicated products aimed at a wide range of users, it is often tough to decide what level of detail to include. Too much, and your advanced users stop reading. Too little and beginners are left confused.

It is thankless, because many users don’t even bother to open the manual! Especially in the music world. Users leave the manual in the box or throw it in a corner. That is, until they get frustrated with an interface or feature they can’t figure out. Then they go after the manual with a vengeance, and woe to the company that can’t answer their questions within the first few paragraphs!

Sadly, the industry doesn’t help much, either. For too many products, especially software, manuals have become an afterthought, or nonexistent. Printed manuals are an endangered species, hunted almost to extinction by the dreaded PDF.

Including a printed manual adds substantial cost — even “cheap” manuals are pricey to make and bind, and they can add substantially to a product’s shipping weight. And why bother going to all that trouble when, as noted above, your research (both empirical and anecdotal) shows that users aren’t going to read it? Market research and consumer behavior tends to show that price trumps all. If you can skimp on the manual and drop your street price by $10-$50, well, you’d be crazy not to.

All these factors contribute to the dearth of good user manuals out there.

The best user manuals educate as well as elucidate. They inspire as much as they inform. They even provide knowledge useful beyond their own product. If you’ve ever read a truly excellent manual, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, go find a manual for a Mackie mixer. The PDFs are online. Read one. They write great manuals.

As a product designer, I always feel it is important to include a manual appropriate to the depth of the product. I have been irritated far too many times by excellent, deep, complex products that not only shipped without a substantial printed manual, but often failed to come with a detailed manual at all! (Native Instruments, this would be the part where you slink away in shame.)

I decided to write this guide because several users had expressed dissatisfaction with Dave Smith’s manual for Evolver. Personally, I found Dave’s manual to be good for what it was — an engineer’s detailed breakdown of his product’s features. But I also felt a little hungry after reading it, and a little frustrated.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-20