If it’s not easy to use, it’s not used

Debates about Microsoft Word vs. Adobe Framemaker appear with regular frequency on the tech-writing mailing lists I am subscribed to. Everyone agrees Frame is an awesome publishing tool. Yet, everyone keeps cribbing about it. So, why does a bright bunch of people who are masters at figuring out stuff, otherwise known as tech-writers, only hesitatingly agree Frame is “kind of great”?

Confession: I love Frame.

I think it’s mostly because Frame is so difficult to use. Its user interface is not intuitive (it doesn’t even have a print preview), and its Help sucks big time. Word, on the contrary, has a fantastic Help, and a user interface so easy even a child can use Word. Developers love Word – they can open Word files in any browser (or even WordViewer or Open Office), and they can review Word docs easily by putting in coloured lines of text (most I know never use the Track change or Comment features). Try turning a black word into red in Frame – and you need to go through a process!

“So what the heck”, thinks a bright techwriter. “If I can learn Frame, I might as well learn XML.” And thus is born a host of companies who get in place a documentation system that can handle big documents effortlessly (the single-most crib against Word) and can also offer single-sourcing (Frame’s big plus): their docs are written in XML by writers who need not worry about structure and formatting, which are taken care of by the XSL, DTD or FOSI that the consultant came in and wrote for a one-time fee. And their XML docs still get converted to HTML-like things that developers can open in their browsers and add their red-ink comments to.

And Word continues to sell – in the home segment as well as in the office (as a part of the Office Suite) – at rates and at volumes that keeps Microsoft happy and profitable. Frame, on the other hand, is so steeply priced that even companies think before buying it – and its steep learning curve doesn’t help.

If something is not easy to use, am I going to use it?

User is king

I have an account with a public-sector bank. It’s a bank that opened a branch right next to the office I was working in then, and it’s where my salary was credited. I still have that account, but since it’s about 7 kms from my residence, I was thinking in terms of internet banking…

“Not a chance”, scoffed the brother. “It’s a public sector bank; they’re dinosaurs.”

I didn’t agree with that line of reasoning, so I went and checked their website. Sure enough, they had internet banking facility. They even had an FAQ for users of their internet-banking facility. I saw the FAQ page and saw red. The following image is a composite screenshot of their FAQ page peppered with my red-ink comments.

To see the picture better, click on it twice but not in quick succession – Click 1 opens the picture in a new tab, and Click 2 expands it to fill the screen.

bankfaq_edit1

And then it struck me. I was looking at the Web page as a techwriter, not as a user.

An average internet-banking user of this bank would be an Indian whose primary language, either at school or at home, was not and is not English. Such a person would not even notice the errors I’ve marked. Such a person would find the text totally comprehensible, unambiguous, and useful – though a tad incomplete because it answers only about four questions and doesn’t even address the how-to of the options provided by the internet-banking facility.

Such a person is the average user of the webpage.  Which means, none of my edits are required.

Does it matter at all that a minuscule percentage of users, like me, are put off by badly-written help?  And no, it’s not because I am a tech-writer that I am put off.  Ever since I can remember, I’ve hated badly-written text (even before I knew – courtesy technical writing – why I hated them).   It somehow smacks of a cavalier attitude.

Coming back to the example in question – I, as that minuscule user percentage, am put off by the bank’s FAQ page and will never read it.  How does that effect me, the user, and other users like me?  I, for one, will never use their internet services, preferring to physically visit the bank for my transactions – if they can’t get their webpage right, they won’t get my online transactions right as well.  Presumptuous and unfair of me, but still… Does it effect the bank?  Nope.  They’ve still got my account with them.  But in the longer run, I may be leaning more towards banks that care…

So, where does audience analysis begin?  And stop?