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Ask Slashdot: Why Does Almost Nothing Come With a Proper Printed Manual Anymore?
OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: As someone who grew up with 1980s and 1990s computers and electronics and still has whole boxes of lovingly prepared printed computer, peripheral, game and software manuals from that era, I am continually surprised by how just many products ship without a proper printed manual these days. Case in point would be things like Android phones. Android has quite a few not-entirely-obvious functions built into it. And a lot of people aren't even aware they exist. No Android phone I've bought has ever had a printed manual included in its little product box. Not even a small one. Even expensive laptops ranging in price from 2,000 to 5,000 Dollars often come only with a few sheets of printed paper in the box -- warranty card, where to register the device, URL for downloading drivers and so on. Why is this? It can't be environmental concern -- the electronics devices themselves, when thrown away, are a hundred times (if not worse) more harmful to the environment than a little 50 to 100 page recycled paper booklet would be. So where are the manuals? Is it the cost of preparing the manuals? The cost of printing them? Is it a few grams of extra weight added to the product box? Is everyone supposed to look up everything online now, even in places where there is no internet connection? And why can't there be a print manual option -- e.g. pay 3 to 5 Dollars extra, and get a full, printed manual you can study on a couch?
Seriously, that's a fucking retarded question to ask and you don't deserve an answer.
Manufacturers are not interested in creating users who know what they are doing.
Designers tend to be of the persuasion that if it needs a manual, it isnt user friendly enough, and writing one anyway makes them look like quitters.
Users themselves just want a black box with a go button that takes them to pleasureville.
Why is this even a question. When a company does not include something it's because they are trying to save money. Even offering a servi e to print the manual for you means they will have to spend money on things to do that.
Just get a tablet and load all your manual/pdfs on that.
Seriously Slashdot, do you let these posts through because you have nothing better to do?
They add bulk, cost and can't be updated. You may think each one is cheap individually but the costs add up when you have to print millions or billions of them.
Why print it when nobody reads it anyway?
The internet is free. I find it easier to google the manual online than find the one that came in the box with the product. Next question...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us."
Yes, devices came with thick, detailed manuals back then. People also typically didn't read those manuals. The vast majority of people either just stumbled their way through "figuring it out" or avoided the product entirely as being overly complicated.
These days, more work has gone into product design to make things intuitive so that people can just "figure it out" easier rather than providing the manual that will go unused anyways. At most things will typically come with a "Quick Start Guide" to give you the most basic of instructions to get the device up and going - and for the most part that's what the market wants.
Those manuals cost money - both to print and to pay someone to write in the first place. Offer the same product on the shelves - one without a manual and one that costs $5 extra that includes it. I'd wager quite a few dollars that the one without the manual will outsell the one that includes it 20 to 1.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
To find out why your smartphone won't connect to the internet, just connect to the internet to download the manual telling you why you can't connect.
What could be simpler?
Just buy an iPhone, it needs no manuals, even 80year olds can use them.
Back in my days, the full electronic schematic for a radio was attached to the inside of the removable back cover.
Consumer products today should be produced with the aid of UX experts and UX studies, so that they are intuitive enough that manuals are not required. Features that are too advanced to be understood without the assistance of a manual should never be compulsory to use, and regarded as customizations for expert users who will research themselves.
No product these days should ever require a manual - we have the tools available to make it possible to produce products intuitive enough that manuals are unnecessary. If you'd like some help learning about it yourself, I suggest you read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" and Don Norman's books for more extensive advice. If your everyday consumer product requires a manual, you're a failure as a designer. The only exceptions to this are really, crazy advanced products, and even then a lot more could usually be done to make them easier to use.
If you want a book on Android, you can buy several, there's no shortage.
Check out the winner of this years Ignobel prize in Literature: Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products
First, most people have seen or used something similar to what they have purchased. This was not true when computers/software... was first available.
Second, the printed material was probably already outdated when it was originally printed, much more so when updates to the software/microcode have been made.
Third, the lack of enough (good) translators that can actually take the original language and make enough sense of it and carry that over to other languages.
Fourth, If something is simple enough to use without a manual, why bother printing one?
Fifth, Search engines with access to Online manuals and support group sites, combined with phone/email support can answer most questions. If you need detailed information, the answers a click away.
Worse than that, neither a printed manual, nor the search functions built into virtual manuals are any real use.
Far faster to just type your question into Google. I use Google to search for MSDN Microsoft development issues given their built in search function is an idiotic programmer's lazy wrapper around an internal string search function.
Microsoft's search jas even apparently forgotten context-sensitive search was invented 30 years ago.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I prefer PDFs that I file when I can find them easily. A second advantage is that most manuals have multiple languages. I can split the PDF and make one that has only the pages I want.
Include a PDF pre-installed on the device - if your device's screen isn't good enough to view PDFs, then you've bought the wrong device -)
The PDF should include a URL for downloading the latest version of the PDF. I get annoyed when manufacturers release a new firmware or software update that changes or add features and don't revise the manual to match.
I have many fond memories of installing WordPerfect 5.1 on my office computer and taking the manual home to study on my own time. The manual explained almost everything you could do at that time in WordPerfect, in plain English, step by step, and with short examples. Thanks to the manual I learned how to do many things that I never actually had to myself and was often called upon by others in the office to help them. Several of us were of the same mind and studied the manual. Oh, the amazing things that got done there because several of us knew how to do extra things. I believe that manual helped to make WordPerfect the word processor of choice at that time. What a cynical, stoopid, useless time we live in now.
I'm not sure how many nerds actually RTFM, versus just having the ability to figure it out and/or search online for specific questions.
When I was a kid, and my father got a new piece of software, he definitely would RTFM. Cover-to-cover. Then he'd buy some 3rd party book on the same piece of software, and read that cover-to-cover. He'd then somehow be less able to use said software than I was, armed only with the intuition of someone with computer fluency.
As a member of the Society for Technical Communication ( https://www.stc.org/ ), I created very technical documentation. My company made software for people who create circuit boards (up to 16 layers thick). Software written by engineers for engineers.
Our users had to convert circuit diagrams into printed circuits that actually worked. Even with our software and our manuals there was an element of magic (this was 20 years ago). For instance 'noise' from one circuit interfering with another. We were in a perpetual update mode and the documentation was always a bit behind, but without it the software would have been useless.
OTOH, I'm a Mac user and since 1984 I've never needed a manual cuz 'it just works'. Even third party software is usually designed with Mac principles and it just works. Exceptions are Adobe, math and CAD programs which still require study to use effectively. Even MS Office can get beginners to a good start without a manual. And Windows itself is almost understandable having copied Mac OS rather closely.
Smartphones can be confusing in this early part of their evolution, but very soon standards will arrive and users will be able to move from one to another without having to relearn from scratch. Some old timers may recall the Model T and other early autos which came with many different configurations, levers, switches, gauges, doodads, etc; all now standardized. You don't need a manual to drive a Chevy or a Suzuki car.
...omphaloskepsis often...