POLL: To RTFM or Not to RTFM

[JediKooter]

Sorry, a bit of a work rant here (just venting)...

So, part of my job is to read through message boards that are related to our software. There's a few sites that I monitor on a daily basis and a lot of stuff I see on there is user error. Thats fine, it happens to all of us. Sometimes, there are some genuine issues that need to be addressed.

I will admit, our application is not a beginers application and requires some time spent on it before I would recommend using it on a project that has a deadline. It does not have your 'typical' user interface our users are familiar with and I can see where that might throw some people off.

What I have a problem with is, when someone goes apeshit nuts and starts moaning and complaining about HOW something works in our app when it is clearly spelled out in the user manual. The amount of time they spent complaining, is more than the amount of time it would have taken them to look it up in the user manual. One of the main reasons why (in addition to saving trees) we no longer print hard copies of our user manuals anymore, is people don't read them. They are all PDFs now and you can do a quick search of keywords to find what you are looking for.

RTFM for crying out loud!!!

[gstelmack]

It all depends on the quality of the manual. I have plenty around that don't give nearly enough info to figure out what's going on. And searching is often a chore if you can't figure out the right keyword.

But yes, I at least try to RTFM.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by JediKooter

What I have a problem with is, when someone goes apeshit nuts and starts moaning and complaining about HOW something works in our app when it is clearly spelled out in the user manual.

Out of curiosity, how many of those users made the purchasing decision for the software versus how many had someone elsewhere in the food chain make the decision for them?

[Greyroofoo]

Manuals are outdated

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

It all depends on the quality of the manual. I have plenty around that don't give nearly enough info to figure out what's going on. And searching is often a chore if you can't figure out the right keyword.

But yes, I at least try to RTFM.

I agree with you on the quality of the manual. I've seen some really bad ones. When we were still a start up, our manual was a joke and was just awful. Now that we have been purchased (3 years ago almost) we have more resources and a much much much better manual now. I guess there's only so much hand holding you can do. There's a Help menu in our UI. In that Help menu, you have several choices, one of those is to open the user manual. Once the user manual is open, there's a search bar you can use or you can use the index. I understand more complex questions may not lend to an easier search, but, most of the gripes are usually a one word search...Import, export, directory, grade, render, codec, etc...

High 5 for RTFM!

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Out of curiosity, how many of those users made the purchasing decision for the software versus how many had someone elsewhere in the food chain make the decision for them?

Good question. Most people on the message boards (from what I can tell in their posts) are one man operations. There are some though, that are in larger post houses. A rough guestament, I would say it's about a 9 to 1 ratio of one man operations to multi person post houses. That's a bit misleading though, because, the multi person post houses usually employ people with experience in that field of work and things like, importing or navigating through directories, are not road blocks to getting their job done and their questions are usually more complex or workflow related.

The one man shops are more of the independent film makers, students, marriage videographers, people just starting out, etc. That's not a bad thing, but, the learning curve is much steeper for them and the way our software is marketed, tends to make people lazy in my opinion.

If you ever used Shake, our UI is a lot like that UI, but, not completely nodal based like Shake is. Our app can be intimidating, but reading the manual will take a lot of mystery out of it and it really isn't as scary as it looks. It's just not what the company's customer base is used to seeing.

[gstelmack]

Given your description, is there a tutorial? Those are usually more useful to me than a manual that explains different concepts. Show me how to DO something, don't tell me about the zillion options available and make me figure out which ones in which order produce something useful.

[Grammaticus]

I do read manuals.

But I will say if the service is free, abuse it.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Given your description, is there a tutorial? Those are usually more useful to me than a manual that explains different concepts. Show me how to DO something, don't tell me about the zillion options available and make me figure out which ones in which order produce something useful.

There are tutorials out there, some free, some not.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by JediKooter

There are tutorials out there, some free, some not.

any naked ones with hot female narrators?

[rjolley]

For the work I do, all of the basics are laid out in the manuals for the software. Most times, I use it to verify syntax. When I learned the software, I had to do presentations based on what was in the manuals, along with working with the product. So, I know everything is there.

I do find that many of the people I answer questions for don't have a clue about how to find answers in the manuals. A lot of times, I'm able to find the answer for them with a simple search.

That being said, I try to feel my way around first before reading the manual. There have been plenty of times I've used something for months, someone will tell me a cool feature, and I'll be totally surprised that was possible.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by rjolley

I do find that many of the people I answer questions for don't have a clue about how to find answers in the manuals. A lot of times, I'm able to find the answer for them with a simple search.

FWIW, I don't think I've ever used the search function on a .pdf file, and I pretty regularly RTFM. I use .pdf's almost exclusively as a way to get around different software & their incompatibility so that multiple users with different installed software can see the contents of an Office document and think of them more like "a picture of a document" than a document itself I guess, which might explain why searching them never really crosses my mind, you don't search pictures.

[rjolley]

Yeah, I can see that.

However, the software's manuals are html and pdfs and freely available, so that doesn't always apply.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Yeah, I can see that.

However, the software's manuals are html and pdfs and freely available, so that doesn't always apply.

I was thinking mostly about this quote in the original post

They are all PDFs now and you can do a quick search of keywords to find what you are looking for.

I get the feeling I'm older than the typical user for JK's software so that might make it less applicable in this case though.

[SportsDino]

No one reads manuals, I think eventually the help system is going to be more search + video based for software, of course I'm biased!

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

any naked ones with hot female narrators?

Not yet. We were in negotiations with Bea Arthur, but, she died. Rosie O'Donnel's people contacted us, but, we told them that we want our users to actually learn something. Now we are in contact with Kathy Griffin and told her we may have to use her stunt double on a few of the tutorials, but, Carrot Top might not be available at the time of production to do those stunts. So, we'll see where it goes from here.

[JediKooter]

Also, if you have the paper and enough ink for your printer, you can print out the manuals if you want. They still have indexes and tables of contents.

And there's no problem with playing around with the software to just kind of get a feel for it. It's just (in my opinion) basic questions are not something to go apeshit mad about...unless you HAVE already looked for it in the manual and it is not there. If you are too lazy to look it up, I have nothing but an emoticon eye roll for you.