I’m not a fan of prefaces. I think they are just noise standing between the reader and the information he seeks. I really, truly hate “conventions used in this guide.” If you need a table to explain the conventions used in your guide, then your conventions probably suck.
However, I do feel the need for a brief statement of what the product is intended to do (not a big marketing blurb), and a description of the scope and intended audience of the guide, and — finally — information about what other user assistance resources are available.
Interestingly, I’m looking at an Administrator guide that has that information on the front cover. Turn that page, and what do you have? Content! (Actually, the table of contents.) There’s not a single page of preface. It’s nice. I think I may go with that.
Off-topic: This publication is clearly intended to be viewed online. The left and right margins are about .5″ It looks fine online, but it’s pretty annoying as a printout. The content is lovely, though. It’s been a long time since I read a user manual and thought the content was lovely.
November 25, 2008 at 12:15 pm |
I did a manual once where I put a visual TOC on the cover. The product was a UI scripting tool and essentially was a workspace that you dragged widgets into, e.g., radio buttons, drop down lists, images, text panels, etc. In usability testing, though, the users would see the blank workspace and want to start typing. So we put a screen capture of a populated workspace on the cover with call outs such as “Radio buttons, p.32″ and “Text panels, p. 46.” That way, even if they did not open the manual, we moved them from a word processor metaphor to a widget one, and gave them an idea of what they could build with the tool.
November 25, 2008 at 1:57 pm |
What a cool idea, Mike.
January 16, 2009 at 9:02 am |
[...] Something Aaron and I definitely agree with: minimalism in prefaces [...]