Bill, FWIW: my background is EE with a minor in Industrial Psych (specifically Human Factors / Ergonomics / Usability Engineering). One book which resonated with me as an engineer is "Psychology of Everyday Things". In it, the author discusses mental models, and those of the developer vs. those of the user. When those mental models fail to intersect or the mental model of the user is inaccurate (both will often be the case with a complex system) - you have the problem being described by the various users here.
This is a field of study that gets a lot of attention in the Aviation community with Flight Management Systems and highly complicated flight deck automation. To be more terse and to this point: the mental model of the developers as to how the K3 rig features are designed to work and be operated for maximum performance hasn't been effectively communicated or fostered in the user community. This is not a situation specific to the K3 of course. In some respects the rig's features drives the operators actions instead of the other way around... and people are fumbling around with them till they seem to get something that "works". Luckily, this situation can be cured. A K3 is no Boeing 787 Flight Management System. As to "nobody reads books", while I think this is true of some segment of the population (in engineering school - I knew many people who never read their textbooks... turned in pristine books as used)... I still have mine and often refer to them at home and at work - that "model" doesn't accurately describe the HAM community as a whole. Personally, I like and will forever prefer books, where I can hold it or put it down, annotate and dog-ear and mark and flag pages, navigate it as I wish and see the totality of the topic subject matter, gauge it by it's physical dimensions. I don't find the "massively hyper-linked, ever-changing, fragmented and presented in many silly windows" means of communicating technical information nearly as effective. I prefer books. :) Sam, KJ4VPI ________________________________ From: Bill VanAlstyne W5WVO <[email protected]> To: Don Cunningham <[email protected]>; Wayne Burdick <[email protected]>; [email protected] Cc: Elecraft List <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, December 6, 2010 10:37:41 PM Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Need for advice was; noise reduction Don et al., As a pro technical writer, I should like to address myself to your point. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
