David Farbey

Everybody’s (not) doing it: is it really OK to keep ignoring document users?

Despite the fact that we live in the information age, telling people that you are information developer – that you write the user guides and online help systems distributed with software and technology products ’ still invites ridicule rather than respect. User guides are still a by-word for poor writing, unintelligible jargon, and irrelevant diagrams. In a recent survey of users carried out by a commercial organisation, respondents talked of ‘read rage’ as they became frustrated with the poor quality of user documentation. This attracted some media attention, but only to emphasise the fact that so many user guides are so bad.

More than a decade ago, leading practitioners in document design such as Karen Schriver and Ginny Redish were writing seriously about the need to engage with users as the only way to find out what users really wanted. To almost all practitioners this is an obvious strategy, but it is notoriously difficult to implement in most organisations. The tech writing blogosphere is teeming with anecdotal evidence of the difficulties writers face in practice, in all but a minority of enterprises, and it seems that the smaller an enterprise is the less likely it is to treat user documentation as an endeavour worthy of serious consideration. Information about products and services tends to flow in one direction only, and that is from the developers downwards and outwards to the users. Few companies feel the need to hire professional writers for user documentation and few of those that do appear to allocate adequate resources to allow their writers to do a good job. When document production appears so low down on the list of corporate priorities, thoughtful information design and planned document development must remain a distant dream.

In December 2008 David Farbey conducted his own private online survey and in this presentation he shares some of the more than 100 negative comments about user documentation that he received. He examines reasons why the general standard of user documentation stubbornly fails to improve and invites suggestions and contributions for a ‘better user documentation manifesto’.

David Farbey is a freelance technical communications and information design consultant and has worked in the field for the last 15 years in a wide range of sectors and industries. He is an Associate Lecturer in Technical Communications at Sheffield Hallam University, and has taught courses on professional writing at Coventry University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication, and a Member of the British Computer Society.