Avoiding End User Alienation: Enrich, Don't Simplify!

Here's a high tech small business place: a Lan House (think: Wang Ba or Internet Café) in urban Brazil. Ethnographers Thais and Sara are at the counter;  videographer Tessa is there with her camera. These folks are about to watch the Lan House owner install some new technology with instructions that seem to assume that no one has prior knowledge nor any real interest in learning about their new tool. The installation instructions were too simple, too lean.  They didn't help the end-user learn anything.  

We've run into this problem before. Manufacturers sometimes have the  idea that end-users want things to be simple. Fair enough.  But end-users also have some fairly complex tasks in mind for their technology. And they usually have some idea about how to install and use things, even before they open the box and read (browse? glance at? toss out?) the installation instructions.

Anthropologists point out that one thing that makes all of us human is our ability to make and use complex tools. And we know that people without engineering degrees can use, modify, and teach others to use some pretty complicated gizmos. But in the absence of an experienced teacher, written  instructions have to do the job. When the instructions don't explain how the new tech works, when they don't  show you how and why the tool you are installing really is something new, interesting, and beautiful, then ipso facto, people will end up calling the tech assistance phone number, and wasting everyone's time and money.

Too many manufacturers make the same mistake that some public policy people make when they are trying to "fix" educational systems for students. Dumbing down a curriculum doesn't work.  A colleague of mine, Valerie Janesick, has a book about this—Curriculum Trends— and I think most  curriculum specialists would agree: adding context-rich information works. Just simplifying things generally doesn't. This is because enriching the curriculum (providing more, not less, context) helps people figure out on their own how things should work, helps them improvise and allows them to get away with not reading the frigging manual. 

No context, no learning. Providing a context-rich learning document helps avoid customer alienation.
Encouraging mastery of the new tool (or mastery of a new classroom skill) makes for satisfied, agile end-users  (and learners)  Dumbing down the instructions pisses people off. After all, the end-user was smart enough to buy your product, right? Start off by recognizing that your end-users really want to learn,  give them some context, and let them improvise and have fun with their new tool.