Re: quo vadis, docs

[Dan Winship <danw gnome org>]

Natan Yellin wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Dan Winship <danw gnome org
> <mailto:danw gnome org>> wrote:
>     Maybe there are as few people reading the
>     docs as there are writing them. In a corporate setting, people will call
>     their help desk when they have problems, and in a home setting, they'll
>     either ask a friend/family member, or ask on a forum. (If people RTFMed
>     first, we wouldn't need an acronym for it.)
> 
> This is a moot point unless it can be proven.

As I understand it, this is pretty much universally assumed in the
usability community.

Eg, here's Joel Spolsky:

    When you design user interfaces, it's a good idea to keep two
    principles in mind:

       1. Users don't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't
          read it.
       2. In fact, users can't read anything, and if they could, they
          wouldn't want to.

(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html)

and Jacob Nielsen:

    The fundamental truth about documentation is that most users simply
    *do not* read manuals.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=o1IqPH0a2fYC&pg=PA149)

Sure, they both go on to discuss the limited situations in which users
will actually look at docs, but in both cases, it suggests that what you
want is a bunch of independent answers to questions of the form "How do
I do X?", not a single document arranged for linear reading.

-- Dan

PS - and I want to second what Luis said:

> [Let me preface this by saying that I respect the work the doc team
> has done, but given that their goals were to help users, I think we
> can best respect their work by asking the real and hard question of
> whether or not the docs, as they currently stand, are helping users,
> and not just glibly dismissing that question out of hand.]