Probably not the practical solution, but both.
I found writing instruction manuals you need a comprehensive manual
(your b)), but to avoid a higher incidence of customers making mistakes
a separate document (your a)) with just those tricky items that resulted
in a high incidence of support calls helped to reduce support needs.
I don't know if it is a psychological thing with a big manual that
overwhelms people, too much foreign (to them) language to wade through,
people too much in a hurry to pick up a big manual but it helps having both.
Possibly the user who can use a spread sheet with some ability, knows he
knows more that nothing, looks at available information.
"Calc Guide" - a large document to wade through, I am doing ok, I will
read it if I have problems (but only if I realise I am having problems).
"Avoiding Gene name errors in Calc" - might be pertinent, I will check
it out.
I am sure someone has done a study on the search order and persistence
of people and instructions. Everyone is in a rush or think they know
enough, but you never know what you don't know until it is put in front
of you.
Look at a list of applicable documents, choose and open a document,
check the contents page, actually get into the text of the document.
Look at your appliance instructions today, fold out step by step
pictures for the impatient, a brief written manual and a downloadable
comprehensive manual if required.
My Nikon came with one 500 page printed manual in the box, navigable
from the contents, highly cross referenced, comprehensively indexed.
My current strategy is 1 comprehensive manual with appendices that deal
with specific aspects (that cross reference to the manual) and can be
printed or PDFed as stand alone documents.
I have only 1 document to maintain but print 2+ PDFs from it. The
specific case appendices are highly visible in the contents page.
steve
On 2016-08-26 02:14, toki wrote:
All:
Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature
Mark Ziemann,
Yotam Eren and
Assam El-OstaEmail author
Genome Biology201617:177
DOI: 10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
© The Author(s). 2016
Published: 23 August 2016
Downloadable from
http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
Most, if not all of the errors described in that study are the result of
the user not knowing how to correctly use their tools.
Question:
Which would be more useful:
a) A stand alone document that explains the errors made by that 20% of
researchers whose data was damaged because they don't know how to use
their tools;
b) A chapter in the Calc Guide describing how to avoid common errors
made by researchers;
jonathon
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