Tip of the month from PRC
July 1997

Writing manuals for consumers or unskilled workers

Issued 2 July 1997

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Tip of the month is edited by Peter Ring, PRC (Peter Ring Consultants, Denmark)
- consultants on how to write user friendly manuals

Expectable reading capability

Even in countries with good compulsary schools and a good education system a lot of grown up people can't read!

The last years there has been made some very interesting investigations on the populations' reading capability in a lot of countries. The results were fairly identical and shocking! Even in a country like Denmark with 9 years compulsary school (or controlled home teaching), approx. 15% of the population above 15 years of age could not even read an easy-to-read tabloid newspaper.

With unskilled workers, it was even worse. A research project made for the unskilled workers union in Denmark (SID) discovered, that approx. 35% of the SID members could not read, and among their long time unemployed members it was close to 50%! They also found out, that most of these people had learned to hide, that they could not read, because they were ashamed of it, and because they were afraid of loosing their job. They might even simulate that they can read by buying a tabloid newspaper now and then, and buy books or magazines to be "displayed" in their home. Just like an alcoholic hides his bottle.

SID realized, that without the ability to read an instruction or a warning, their members could be seriously injured, and that the employers therefore preferred people who could read. That made SID start a lot of very successful reading courses for their members, but that is another story.

Many of these people knew the letters, but had so little reading experience that they could not recognize even simple words. They consequently tried to read letter by letter, spelling themselves through a text. But when they had spelled through three even not very long words, they had forgotten the first word! In that way, they could not combine the words to a sentence with a meaning. On the other hand, this means, that a lot of these people could understand one or two word sentences like "Up", "Down", "Start", "Stop!" or (fewer) "Fast rewind".

Implications for manuals to consumers or unskilled workers

If we sell products which are to be used by these categories of people - and where we cannot be SURE there are other people to instruct them properly - there is only one way: Cartoon style manuals.

If you use completely text free manuals, you leave too much to making you skilled and unskilled readers guess the meaning of you little icons. In most cases, I suggest a small step upward, KNOWING that most of my readers can read a little bit. I call it cartoon style with short supplementing texts:

Explanations are given by images. Example: tell that is is a lawn cutter by showing an image of somebody cutting the lawn, with a significant difference between the cut and the un-cut grass.
All instructions are given by cartoons.
All illustrations are drawings. Drawings are normally better than photos because it is easier to simplify the image and emphasize on the most important points.
Texts are ultra short: one, two, absolutely max. three word "sentences" like 'Start', 'Fast rewind', - or '1/8" ' with a pointer to a screw. Forget about complete sentences with correct grammar. Use cue words and numbers only.

Isn't it very expensive?

Of course it is more expensive, but not necessarily as bad as you maybe think. For such purposes, I often use very simple drawing programmes, like the drawing facilities on/off the sheet in Word 6/7. I also do a lot of "recycling". When I have e.g. made a good hand, I re-use it again and again. I also use lock to grid a lot in order to get nice horizontal and vertical lines where appropriate. A person can be drawn with a few lines and ellipses.

Doesn't it takes up a lot of space?

I'm often surprised. I recently made a small instruction sheet. In text it would have been 4 steps = 8-12 lines of text. Instead I made 4 little drawings, and I putted 4 manuals on an A4 sheet (A4 ~ Letter). I could not have made them much smaller by text only, not to mention some need for a little drawing or two.

I have tried with some other manuals, and typically "almost text free cartoons" takes up 2-4 times the space of a "text only" instruction, and 1.5-2.5 times the space of a "normal instruction with some images".

In many cases, it is a good idea to make a simple cartoon-style manual for the basic operations + a larger manual with the more advanced applications written for those who can read.

Conclusion

When writing for ordinary consumers and/or unskilled workers, think about their often very bad reading capability, and how to solve that problem in a proper way. Often, "cartoons with ultra short texts" is the best solution.

Interested in reading more - also covering other groups of users?

Then read my book or get PQM 3.0!

If you disagree with these ideas - or have other relevant points, experiences, or ideas +/-, please e-mail me!

Ideas for new "Tip of the month" subjects are very welcome, too!

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Tip of the month from PRC July 1997