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.With very few exceptions, users will not cuddle up with your manual and readit through before they begin to use your software.In general, your users are trying to getsomething done, and they see reading the manual as a waste of time, or at the very least, adistraction that keeps them from getting their task done.The very fact that you're reading this book puts you in an elite group of highly literate people.Yes, I know, people who use computers are by and large able to read, but I guarantee youthat a good percentage of them will find reading a chore.The language in which the manualis written may not be their first language, and they may not be totally fluent.They may bekids! They can decipher the manual if they really must, but they sure ain't gonna read it ifthey don't have to.Users do just-in-time reading on a strictly need-to-know basis.The upshot of all this is that you probably have no choice but to design your software so itdoesn't need a manual in the first place.The only exception I can think of is if your users donot have any domain knowledge they don't really understand what the program is intendedto do, but they know that they better learn.A great example of this is Intuit's immenselypopular small-business accounting program, QuickBooks.Many people who use thisprogram are small-business owners who simply have no idea what's involved in accounting.The manual for QuickBooks assumes this and assumes that it will have to teach peoplebasic accounting principles.There's no other way to do it.If a small business owner wants tolearn accounting, they actually might just curl up with the QuickBooks manual in acomfortable chair and read it cover to cover.Still, for people who do understand accounting,QuickBooks is reasonably easy to use without the manual.In fact, users don't read anything.This may sound a little harsh, but you'll see when you do usability tests that there are quite afew users who simply do not read words that you put on the screen.If you pop up an errorbox of any sort, they simply will not read it.This may be disconcerting to you as aprogrammer because you imagine yourself conducting a dialog with the user."Hey, user!"you say."You can't open that file, we don't support that file format!" Still, experience showsthat the more words you put on a dialog box, the fewer people will actually read it.The fact that users do not read the manual leads many software designers to assume thatthey are going to have to educate users by verbosely describing things as they go along.You see this all over the place in programs.In principle it's OK, but in reality, people'saversion to reading means that this will almost always get you in trouble.Experienced UIdesigners literally try to minimize the number of words in dialogs to increase the chancesthat they will get read.When I worked on Juno, the UI people understood this principle andtried to write short, clear, simple text.Sadly, the CEO had been an English major at an Ivy50 League college; he had no training in UI design or software engineering, but he sure thoughthe was a good editor of prose.So, he vetoed the wording done by the professional UIdesigners and added a lot of his own verbiage.A typical dialog in Juno looks like the oneshown in Figure 9-1.Compare that to the equivalent dialog in Microsoft Windows shown inFigure 9-2.Figure 9-1: The modem dialog from Juno 4.Nobody reads these things.51 Figure 9-2: The equivalent dialog from Microsoft Windows.Although it contains farfewer words, it's much more usable.Intuitively, you might guess that the Juno version, with eighty words of instructions, would be"superior" (in other words, easier to use) than the Windows version with its five words ofinstructions.In reality, when you run a usability test on this kind of thing, you'll find that:1.Advanced users skip over the instructions.They assume they know how to use thingsand don't have time to read complicated instructions.2.Most novice users skip over the instructions.They don't like reading too much andhope that the defaults will be OK.3.The few novice users who do earnestly try to read the instructions (some of whom areonly reading them because it's a usability test and they feel obliged) are oftenconfused by the sheer number of words and concepts
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