Path: athena.cs.uga.edu!emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!modus!otello!gear!am!alex From: alex@am.sublink.org (Alex Martelli) Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,sublink.rec.funny Subject: Re: Floppy Disk Labels Message-ID: [1992Oct05.171416.28431@am.sublink.org] Date: 5 Oct 92 17:14:16 GMT References: [1992Sep24.224056.3652@kopachuk.uucp] [141.18318@incc.com] [1992Sep26.182821.21658@ceilidh.beartrack.com] [1405@pacsoft.com] [49719@sunquest.UUCP] Organization: Premiata Famiglia Martelli & Figli Lines: 36 ahd@apollo.sunquest.com (Arthur H. Dyer) writes: ... :]But the authors assured him he had nothing to be embarassed about. After all, :]the document was intended for novices, and they were grateful for being taught :]that you should assume _nothing_ when dealing with beginners. :]Hmm. Maybe this thread really belongs in comp.human-factors? :-) Maybe! But meanwhile I can't resist any more relating a similar problem which really occurred to me a few years back... I had set up an image acquisition station for a research laboratory; one mounted a write-enabled tape spool in a dedicated tape drive, the image to be digitized in the microdensitometer, and had to type a few commands at the console of the dedicated mini driving it all, to give a few parameters of the digitizing operation. I wrote what I believed were VERY clear instructions on how to operate the thing (otherwise I would be sure to be called in every time), and tested them first on a secretary. She immediately showed me the first problem with the way my instructions were worded: "Mount the tape spool in the drive", she read, and she did so, but then the instructions continued, "after removing the ring" -- alas, once the tape spool was mounted, the write-protection ring was not accessible any more (by design of those tape-spool units), so she had to unmount the spool! My fault of course, so I rephrased: "After removing the ring, mount the tape spool in the drive", and re-tested, this time with a fairly senior computer scientist of the lab as my guinea pig. "After removing the ring", he read, and, with a slightly perplexed expression to his face, proceeded to remove his wedding ring from his finger (thinking perhaps of some static-discharge risk?-) before continuing to read... You can bet that ALL operating instructions I have written since then have been HEAVILY laced with redundancy and warnings not to proceed until all the steps have been read through! -- Alex Martelli - alex@am.sublink.org - +39 (51) 250434 - Bologna, Italia
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