I’m pretty good with new technology for an old guy, I’m still working at my company’s tech center designing and evaluating new audio and infotainment systems for cars we are developing for 2028 and beyond.
But, when I received my new company lease and tried to sign up for the connected car services, I was dumbfounded by the lack of instructions on how to do this, and the dealership knew less than I did, as the system was brand new. So I went to the source, they guys who work a couple of rows down from me actually know how the system is supposed to work. They walked me through the missing steps and got me up and running and then I laid into their supervisor about how in the hell are people who don’t have my level of support supposed to figure this crap out.
They immediately started working on updating the instructions to new car dealers.
I only read the manual when the way to do something which should be obvious isn’t, thanks to bad UI design. Like “hold down the button for five seconds to go into time setting mode.”
But I have an advantage since I’m a programmer and computer architect, and am from a time when you had to know the design a computer at the lowest levels, so I understand what is going on inside better than a lot of CS majors today.
Manuals are awful, because things are so complex that they got very large, and it is cheaper to put everything online. Even my last car came with an awful and incomplete manual. Who needs a manual since the answer to any question you have is on YouTube?
Manuals and user instructions are awful because they are too wordy with a lot of explanations and pictures. Okay, wordy and explanations are fine for beginners but at the top I want to see a brief punch list. Easy and quick to read. To remind me of the needed steps. Follow that with the wordy, explanation-full justification and illustrations if that is what the user needs to be successful.
Example:
Summary of steps
Start with a new, blank worksheet.
File | Open | navigate to the desired file
Right click on file, select import
and so on…
And then followed by the complete walk-through, to be used as needed.
Full instructions
You’ll want to start with a blank worksheet because a worksheet containing data would lose that information with these steps.
(Picture of application screen)
From the File pull-down menu, click on it and select New.
(Picture of the expanded File pull-down menu)
(Picture of a new, blank worksheet.)
Again, select the File pull-down menu, and select Open.
(Picture of dialog box with an open folder displaying the available files in that folder)
Use the Up arrow to navigate to the folder above the open one, or select a folder within the currently-open one. Navigate to the desired folder. If you are currently in the desired folder then go to the next step.
Once in the desired folder, locate the desired file. Click once on the file to highlight it. Use the right mouse button to click on the file. A sub-menu will be displayed.
(Picture of a selected file with the open sub-menu)
To be honest I’ve found the “how to get started” documentation reasonably good. It’s when you go beyond that to do something kind of nonstandard that it sucks. One manual for a really complex piece of software that I used was good at this, only it wasn’t a manual but more of an online documentation system.
Now I wrote a manual for another complex piece of software that I managed the development of. I had a tech writer that helped, but my biggest advantage was I understood the software. Most tech writers don’t, not at the deepest level, and that’s because it is not their field. One customer said the software sucked but the manual was great, so there’s that.
I can usually figure things out because I have a good model about how these things work, but my wife who is a biologist and doesn’t intuitively understand tech gets nowhere. And then calls me, and I fix it in five seconds.
My wife and I both bought new vehicles this year. The owner’s manual for each car spends about 60 pages on how to use the seat belts. Of course, the vast majority of that is for the one billion ways of installing a child seat. The kid will be walking to college by the time a parent figures it out.
I am normally pretty good at figuring things out. I am a mechanic by trade. But lately I have been trying to learn a cad program and my brain just seems to shut down within minutes of turning it on. I don’t make any progress. Not sure how to deal with this as I really need to learn this program.
Try watching someone else use it. When manuals are bad, as they mostly used to be, and now are mostly non-existent, then I find I can get going faster after watching someone else doing something useful with the product.
Over the course of about 30 years, I used 5 or 6 different CAD programs, some updated along the way, including 2D, 3D, and parametric models. Changing from one to another is a challenge as each program has its own quirks. I was fortunate enough to have coworkers who were good at explaining, because the tutorials didn’t help very much. Retirement has helped a lot, tho.
Not to toot my own horn too much, but I’m extremely good at it. It’s always been my strong suit at work, and something that’s been extremely helpful as a homeowner as well.
I learned the basics helping my father do shade-tree mechanic stuff and general home handyman stuff. He did a great job explaining the how part of how he was thinking, how he approached it, how he researched it ahead of time/read the manual, how to regroup and try again, etc…
I’m generally extremely confident that I can get any consumer-grade electronic device working on my own, and pretty confident in doing automotive work and general home improvement as well. Software is even easier; as a programmer and long-time IT guy, it’s a matter of figuring out how things are organized, etc.
My philosophy is to use all available information, but evaluate each. That might (or might not) include a manual, intuition, and experience. I often try to figure it out on my own, but get stymied at one point, when YouTube and/or internet communication can come to the rescue.
I don’t hold manuals in the highest regard – especially since they are often created in a foreign language and don’t translate well. But I don’t hold YouTube videos as gospel, either. Both have their advantages and drawbacks. Use them appropriately.
And sometimes two heads are better than one. I have several friends who often can fill in what I overlook, and vice-versa.
One way to describe my professional work is instrumentation engineer. We deal with controls and sensors to detect, supervise, increase, decrease, automate, protect, [insert verb] all sorts of stuff from Happy Meal toys to Space Shuttles. We use an endless variety of tools and techniques with buttons (often limited) and screens (limited, again) and wires and stuff to figure out. I can’t do everything, of course, but think I’m good at my responsibilities and a lot of that is good ol’ figuring stuff out.
I usually leaf through the instructions but read closely only when I can’t figure out how to do something. I’ve had a computer for over 42 years (not quite half my life) and grew up with the many iterations of DOS and Windows, so I comfortable with using it. Although I have never used any of the office suite (including Word). Occasionally, I’ll ask my son for help. He was a member of the team that built XT, the first Windows version not based on MS-DOS.
On the other hand, the one gadget I just cannot figure out is my cell phone (Android). The other day, it went ding-dong every 2 or 3 minutes for several hours and nothing I could think of doing would tell me why.
After 20 working years or so being the department “power user” on some of the software we used, and working with a vendor for a year on a replacement program for our main business function, I thought I had a handle on how software “ought” to work. Then there was a sort of consistency among Windows programs, and most new programs that I was exposed to seemed to follow along. So I thought I understood what made a piece of software intuitive.
I have been left in the dust, and retirement hasn’t helped. Nothing new is intuitive to me any more, I think it’s because the underlying basis of everything has changed radically when I wasn’t looking. Web-based applications each just seem to do their own thing, based on what someone somewhere thought was normal. Menus are passé. Simple functions are hidden, while things you don’t need are flashing and calling for your attention.
So, to answer the OP, I try, I noodle around hoping not to break anything, but I always end up needing to consult an expert or check the (often maddeningly casual) tutorials or whatever is offered. Searchable online software manuals really seem to be a thing of the past. Development is everything, usability is way down the list.
I hope you’ll excuse me now, I need to take a walk to Shelbyville. Now where did I put those onions?
I am great at figuring things out, and these days I always read initial set-up/assembly or quick start guides.
Stuff can either be super complex, or unexpectedly unintuitive, or both, and getting things into useable state the first time is often the most fraught part of setup.
You must install the software with the device plugged in and turned on. Be sure to install the software prior to plugging in the device. Make sure you assemble pieces G and H before you attach G to D, or the thing won’t come together.
It’s just not worth winging it at the outset. Unintuitive missed steps or requirements can be time consuming or costly.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I had a 3rd party book that I learned AutoCad 2.6 with. That’s been 38 years ago. Can’t remember the name of the book, but it was great with “do the exercise while reading the book”. Have been using AutoCad ever since as a steel detailer. ETA: Having started using computers with a TRS-=80 Model 1 46 years ago, I had to learn how to figure computers out.
I can figure a lot of things out, from home improvement to building to mechanics to computers. Even took to horseshoeing intuitively, at least according to my ex-farrier. Can generally MacGyver with the best of them. Sometimes it’s not so much that I innately know something, but I know where to go find the answers, or can reason it out. Have a buddy who couldn’t figure his way out of an open paper sack - the man was born with a Defective Tool Gland - I saved his bacon many a time.
Hey, I resemble that remark. Well, not really. I was a technical writer for over 20 years, writing everything from software user manuals, to hardware manuals, to training manuals, to drug formularies, to ghost-writing textbooks, and pretty much everything else in between. Mine were written well, and in English
So why are they often poorly written? I can write you instructions that are crystal clear, that a beginner can follow confidently. Then Engineering gets hold of it. “Well, yes, it is correct, but it just doesn’t sound technical enough.” Then Marketing gets hold of it. “It just doesn’t sound cool. Can you add some ‘Bam! Zowie! Biff!’ or whatever, to spice it up? Oh, and use more of the passive voice and throw in a few more acronyms, to show that we’re y’know, high tech and stuff.”
And by the time the time changes have been made and Engineering, Marketing, and various department heads have signed off, my crystal clear instructions are now as clear as mud.
Sadly, this is all too true. A company has a bad fiscal year, and among the first places it looks to downsize, is the technical writing group. After all, as the PTB see it, the tech writers add nothing—nobody buys a product because of the manual. People buy it because of the great job the engineers have done in designing and building the product, and the job that marketers did in selling it. Let those folks write the manuals! What a great idea!
Except it’s not. Now you’ve got engineers who have to write something, when they’d rather be working on designing the next version of the product. And the marketers who have to take time away from schmoozing ad companies and clients, in order to write books. Neither wants that task, and it shows in the manuals they produce.
That’s how you do it. I could put a finer point or two on what he posted (use task-oriented headers, remember parallelism in step-by-step instructions), but his message comes through. Keep things clear and simple; or as we so often said, keep to the KISS rule.
If it is like most things I have done I will do ok once I get going. For some reason my eyes just gloss over when i start reading the instructions. Applying myself for an extended period seems to be my biggest hurdle right now.
I personally just don’t do well learning by reading the manual until I have tried by futzing first. Then I look at the manual with the problems I ran into in mind and can actually absorb the directions.