Clarity Trumps Brevity

Dan Sil­ver­man does­n’t like his Avaya desk­top phone1 very much. He explains how its cryp­tic but­tons don’t real­ly pro­vide enough infor­ma­tion to make sense of their func­tion. He also includes this gem on what hap­pens when indus­tri­al design fails (which is almost always, to some extent):

Yes, in the case of elec­tron­ic devices, the design should intu­itive­ly con­vey how it works with­out the need for a man­u­al. But if the design is bad, a man­u­al is the next best thing.

Writ­ing the man­u­al or the help should be inte­gral to the process of design and not left until the end (or worse, after the prod­uct ships). Good man­u­als and help can indeed be the next best thing to an inspired design and make prod­ucts far more usable.

1see how I invent­ed a new phrase to describe an old thing based on the way we do things now?

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

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