Subscribe to the Journals On July 1st, David Pogue posted a review for the New York Times on a multi-functional wireless router. I heard about over Twitter from a technical communicator (can’t find the tweet now) because of the plug that Pogue puts in for us. Of course, you could look at it as a jab, but you be the judge:
[T]he Quick Start sheet instructs you to connect a cable to the router’s WAN port — but that port is not identified anywhere. There are five identical featureless and unlabeled Ethernet jacks on the router. Which one’s the WAN port? Let’s play Ethernet roulette!
Above all — and this is the mind-blowing part — D-Link is selling this very complex piece of consumer technology without a single word of instructions for the features that make it unique.
Those cool features like sharing a hard drive, sharing an iTunes library, downloading BitTorrent, connecting a U.S.B. scanner or printer that all computers can share? There’s not a single syllable about them in the user guide.
The user guide is a PDF document on the CD — you don’t get a printed book, of course — so what would it have cost D-Link to write up these features?
D-Link’s PR person suggested that the elusive instructions might be on the company’s Web site. (They weren’t.) In the end, it took a D-Link product manager a day to figure out how to work these features himself and supply me with the instructions. He says that he’ll have them posted on D-Link’s Web site by the time the 685 goes on sale.
As I say, he could be making a jab at the technical writers (if any) involved with this product. But more important, Pogue is making a case for good technical communication. A rundown of the basic problems:
- Incomplete instructions
- Missing illustrations or diagrams
- Lack of description or instruction about unique or important features
- Documentation missing on the website
- Miscommunication within the company about the availability or launch of documentation
In Pogue’s summary of the documentation’s shortcomings, you can sense the incredulity that mixes with his excitement about the router. The lack of adequate documentation soured his experience. Here’s one for your bag when marketing yourself and explaining why technical communicators are essential.
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Ben Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Sheila, your comment addresses a topic I’ve been thinking about: the use of examples.
[Reply]