A blogger (www.peterme.com) recently purchased an original Macintosh 128K User Manual from 1984 and published some pictures from it and wrote a great post. He says, "I recently purchased an original Macintosh User Manual (thanks eBay!). I had seen one at a garage sale, and was struck by how it had to explain a total paradigm shift in interacting with computers. I figured I could learn something about helping make innovation happen. It's been an intriguing read. It's a remarkably handsome manual, beautifully typeset, which, considering par for the course at the time was probably Courier with few illustrations, is saying something. Also, even back in 1984, there was no definite article. You get phrases like "With Macintosh, you're in charge." No "the"s or "a"s. One of the more striking things was how every Chapter is introduced with a full-color photo of Macintosh being used. (See the pictures at www.peterme.com).

Read the rest of this article »

What is TV advertising in this age of growing the Internet usage. TV is a good marketing medium. Think about it. We are so desensitized to commercials. We use them for food or bathroom breaks during hot debates or we just downright fast forward through them. I know that I can’t stand watching them, so I just forward through them. Bye, bye commercials. Another reason I don’t watch is the quality of the commercials. I see far too many local commercials that are just annoying and awful to watch. What are these business owners thinking when they make those commercials?

Read the rest of this article »

Users Manuals have always been here. They are here at least since the advent of technology and availability of products. Almost every one has a collection of instruction manuals; some stash them somewhere in their house, some put them in files and folders and some other throw them away to go to recycle.

Search for users' manuals start when people need instructions for some old vacuum cleaner, or water filter, or a dishwasher or a new iPhone. Sadly, they are not found when most needed and a wild hunt starts. Sometime users have to go to customers' services of the respective product just to find an answering machine giving not so much required instructions. What is worst, some time users may get the answer that help for an old product is not available as the company has abandoned the production of some old model.

Read the rest of this article »

Have you ever thought why users call customers support? Mostly users call when they don't get the right answers in accompanying the users' manuals, if there is one along with the product. Large number of manufacturers doesn’t supply a user manual with their products in the first place and some of those who do, do not answers all questions.

Manufacturers and marketing professionals often tend to underestimate importance of a nicely written user manual and they find their way out of selling products without the manual. "Who reads," they reason out.

Read the rest of this article »

Mostly the brochures are artistically laid out and presented whereas User’s manuals are like government notifications; life less, color less and totally technical. The brochure gets the bigger share of budget as compared to the manuals. This indicates that most concerns treat potential users so much better than existing users and focus accordingly?

Read the rest of this article »

Users' manuals are needed after initial installation and or operation. One of the requirements in the framework is the User Phase. In this stage users come across newer situation in the use of the product. All of those must be anticipated and documented in users' manuals.

The problem is that only a few manufacturers take the time for this detailed analysis and that is why so many annuals either do not solve user problems or fail because they are too hard to learn and use.

Read the rest of this article »

I have been reading many manuals and instruction books lately. What I noted most is how they help a common user. All of this reading and other recent experiences has made me think about the core competency of writing and writing well and how does it help users across different cultures? How manuals make a business case and add value. One conclusion is that technical manual writers should know more about world geography and different cultures.

Read the rest of this article »