Speaking of Manuals

[Mike Rivers]

 

I know some products like this:

 

Dilbert - 9/18/2019

[Greg Mein]

I sure appreciate when there's a PDF to search through. Sometimes manufacturer youtube videos are really helpful.

[The Real MC]

One of my beefs with Logic Pro 10 is that Apple does not provide the PDF manual. You have to access the manual online, and I prefer to keep my music computer offline.

[Anderton]

As a fellow manual writer, I think Mike will back me up on this:

 

If you document a good operating system, people will say you wrote a good manual

If you document a crappy operating system, people will say you wrote a crappy manual

 

There was one manufacturer years ago who made good products, but their manuals (printed, included in the box - this was pre-net) really sucked. As I was looking for manual gigs, I pitched them on doing their manuals. The marketing guy got a really confused look on this face - "Why? By the time the get to the manual, they've already bought the unit."

[Joe Muscara]

One of my beefs with Logic Pro 10 is that Apple does not provide the PDF manual. You have to access the manual online, and I prefer to keep my music computer offline.

You can download all the Logic manuals in iBooks. I like that even better than a PDF because it's easier and more flexible, especially on my iPad. They also get updates so I'm always current with the latest version of the software.

[Mike Rivers]

If you document a good operating system, people will say you wrote a good manual

If you document a crappy operating system, people will say you wrote a crappy manual

 

That sounds reasonable to me.

 

I don't remember where I learned this, probably from my work with the FAA, was that you don't wait until the product is finished before you write the manual. The manual should start with the design specification and test procedures as a reference. This isn't the published "spec sheet," but rather the detailed specifications that tell the designers what the product needs to do and how to test it to assure that it works as specified. That was pretty easy to do with hardware - certain basic commitments were made early on. But with software based products and software-as-product, the designers tend to go off on tangents and sell the marketing department on features they never asked for. And not even mission-critical software designers work from very detailed formal design and test documents these days - witness the Boeing 737-MAX.

 

By the time I started working with Mackie, the hardware design was pretty much complete, but the software people kept changing the user interface, so it was hard to keep the manual in sync.

 

There was one manufacturer years ago who made good products, but their manuals (printed, included in the box - this was pre-net) really sucked. As I was looking for manual gigs, I pitched them on doing their manuals. The marketing guy got a really confused look on this face - "Why? By the time the get to the manual, they've already bought the unit."

 

At Mackie, manuals fell under the marketing department umbrella. It made sense because it was the marketing department that researched what the customers needed. They were the ones who sketched out the initial product description, and that's what wen to engineering to figure out how to implement it. I wasn't there long enough to see a product from start to finish but there were times when I straddled the fence - learning from the engineers just what requirement a particular function satisfied, or went to marketing to see how far I should go into detail describing how a function was implemented. For example, Marketing didn't want a detailed explanation of the HDR24/96's editing features in the User's Guide. They were pitching it as a replacement for the rack of ADATs, or TASCAM or Fostex analog multitrack recorders, or even the tired Ampex, and didn't want to distract customers looking for a piece of hardware with a detailed description of software functions. For that, there was a separate Editing Guide, and later on, a very detailed Technical Reference. The product has been long gone from the product line, but the manuals are still on line.

 

 

 

[dboomer]

I"ve had similar issues with manuals I have written as well. The challenge is that the manual must be submitted with the product for UL approvals many months before first customer ship. So while the hardware may be done, the features planned for the product in the firmware may not yet all be up and running.

 

It"s a shame that for highly technical products manufacturers must include a printed manual. And then we print it a single manual in a dozen languages as it it more cost effective to produce a single manual (that most people never really read anyway). We are killing a lot of trees. So in my opinion users would be better served with an online manual (that can be easily updated) rather than a multi-page book that usually turns out to be rather incomplete. But there is a UL requirement that unless the manual can be directly read on the product itself, it must include a printed OM.

 

Btw ... my all time favorite manual was for the Yamaha PM 1000 old 70s mixer

[Anderton]

By the time I started working with Mackie, the hardware design was pretty much complete, but the software people kept changing the user interface, so it was hard to keep the manual in sync.

 

That's what got me to stop doing manuals - the Emulator III. I was getting a new EPROM every few days. I offered to train Riley at E-Mu to do manuals, because I said they REALLY needed someone in-house. He ended up doing a great job, better than what I could have done remotely. I missed working with E-Mu, but as you know...the job of a consultant is to consult, even if the recommendation is that you should stop consulting.

[J. Dan]

I can say for sure I will not buy a complex new product without first reading the manual, and that can play a huge part in my decision. The information I need in order to figure out if it will do what I need usually just isn't available in marketing materials. I need details.

[Mike Rivers]

Sometimes you need to go to the manual just to see how big it is or what type of connectors it uses.