One person in a public forum once raised a very interesting question. It went something like this:

I want to make ice cream.
I followed one manual.
The manual is not easily understandable.
so i am not able to follow it after half away.
then i looked for another .. it too have the same problem.
then i followed many.

Finally i decided not to make ice creams at all ..


now where is the problem ..

1. ICE CREAM
2. MANUALS
3. My inability to understand manuals.

This is a classic query which anyone writing documentation will one day encounter. It is valid in almost all industries. Being in this co for close to 2 years now, and watching and following plenty of correspondence from my CTO and others, it was practically impossible for me not to comment on this problem.

The query has pointed out 3 different components which could have gone wrong.

1) The Ice Cream: They can never be a problem unless the reader is suffering from diabetes or cold... so we can rule them out.. unless, of course, manual is written in Zambeki where the word Ice Cream actually means Freshly Fried Fish Liver or something!!! and the reader gave up because the Ice Cream tasted fishy!

2) Manual: A recipe book (or manual as it is referred here) is not too different from a user guide that we software blokes package with every product.Now a user guide has to be written keeping the reader in mind. What it means is that a person from Mars who knows English (or Zambeki for that matter), but has no idea what an ice cream is, should be able to make Ice cream successfully after reading this manual. So a lot of research has to go into the targeted audience of this product, in our case, the ice cream maker. Therefore any user guide, that a user does not understand fully, is not good enough, and the manufacturers (authors, publisher, proofreader etc etc.,) haven't done their job properly.

3) User's inability to understand the document: Well, if a user guide is well written this situation should not arise. But there is a possibility that the Martian may not know English, or he has mugged up the whole dictionary without mugging Wren and Martin. In this situation, the manufacturer cannot do anything.... well he can do something.. While advertising the guide, he can put in fine print that the user is assumed to hv mugged the whole dictionary AND Wren and Martin to understand the whole book, seeing which, the Martian knows that the book is not for him, or he will realise that he has to mug Wren and Martin too.

Therefore the problem is invariably the manual. If the user is unable to understand, either the writer of the manual has forgotten to point out that its not for him/her, or its not written well enough.