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February 14, 2015 editorial: comments

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Topic February 14, 2015 editorial: comments

The “WTF?” Product Manual

I had two separate instances recently where I was working with complex new plug-ins and discovered that their product manuals left out important information. For both products I had do a lot of detective work just to understand how to use some key features. To this I say, “WTF?”

C’mon. If you’re going to sell a product to the public, it should have thorough enough documentation that it doesn’t leave users scratching their heads about important aspects of the GUI. I know that some software companies are under pressure to release titles quickly, but it should be incumbent upon them to make sure the manual is comprehensive.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this isn’t just a problem with software. There are plenty of hardware units with subpar manuals, too. Have you ever gotten one that offers only a few sketchy instructions about the unit and then goes on to repeat that same inadequate information in 10 different languages? Such manuals will often say “For more information, visit our website,” but when you get there, all you usually find is marketing babble.

Speaking of translated material, the manuals for products originally produced in non-English-speaking countries often suffer from bad translations, which makes them harder to understand. I suspect that it often that comes down to economics, where the company doesn’t spend enough to get a quality translation, and get the document proofread and edited once it’s in English. To be fair, many large music manufacturers based overseas have improved their manual translations a lot over the last 10 years of so.

Getting back to those two plug-ins with subpar manuals that I mentioned at the top, I was pondering what would make a manufacturer release substandard documentation for a new and complex product? All I could come up with was that perhaps the folks writing the manual were so deeply involved in the product’s development that they’d lost all perspective and assumed way too much knowledge on the part of the customer. I’d like to believe that was the case, rather than that they were just cutting corners.

Whatever the causes may be,  I urge manufacturers to please make sure their documentation or online help is up to snuff before releasing a new product.

What kinds of problems have you run into with product manuals?

Have a great week.

Mike Levine

U.S. Editor, Audiofanzine

 

2
Yes. I lost a year of creativity and work flow because of...well, please just TRY to make sense of the Elektron Analog Four downloadable only operation guide. It reads like instructions written by a NASA engineer on how to repair a panel on the International Space Station. Like the article mentioned, I would like to think it's a translation thing but no, it's based entirely on a LOT of assumptions that you already know their other products. This is particularly unfortunate when an instrument has so much potential but yet you can watch their forum with most new owners of the A4 left scratching and much of it comes from almost an arrogant assumption a person already understands the 'Elektron Way', and what's odd is up and to their Monomachine, their user manuals came bound and printed AND were easy to understand...until the black boxes came, and no bound printed manuals came any longer with instrument...which actually from a cost savings stance, would have made it easier for them to improve on the shitty manuals by simply editing them...so as more and more new O.S.'s are released, even further from the downloadable operation manual it becomes....aaaghhhh!
What did I do? I went back to digging into my Radikal Technologies Spectralis.

"Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding. Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding." Proverbs 2:2-3

3
Several years ago I bought a Digitech GNX4. Great unit with lots of capability but the manual sucked. As already mentioned if you're already familiar with a particular manufacturer'a line of products, maybe all the acronyms make intuitive sense. If not it's more head scratching than knob-fiddling. Craig Anderton has published supplements to this and other products out there I guess because it's such a wide spread common experience that he saw a market for it. In any case i think we all get that with any new software or gizmo there can be quite a learning curve but a decent manual would go a long way to customer satisfaction and I guess that would lead to brand loyalty.
4
Quote from Mike:
Have you ever gotten one that offers only a few sketchy instructions about the unit and then goes on to repeat that same inadequate information in 10 different languages?


Drives me NUTS when this happens! And it's not just in music production-related products.....

Quote from Mike:
All I could come up with was that perhaps the folks writing the manual were so deeply involved in the product’s development that they’d lost all perspective and assumed way too much knowledge on the part of the customer.
 


Typical engineer's error. Everything they work hard on producing, they do based on what they find to be intuitive and, at times, common sensical. It's hard for them to get out of their own heads!

Waves, while not typically my favorite plug-in developers, write fantastic user manuals IMHO. They go through every single button on their plug-ins and explain it in several different ways. Sometimes it sounds too technical, but at the very least it's always an exhaustive, and usually a comprehensive manual :)