Instruction books

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Never forget that instruction books are written by people who understand the product and are written for people who don't. Not only that but they are usually written by geeks. That way you get an acronym like 'SNAFU' on page 5 which is explained on page 126. I'd need 4 thumbs to successfully hold the pages that tell me how to burn a DVD on my TV recorder and I have still no idea how to copy a VHS tape to DVD. Resetting the microwave clock is stunningly illogical and I still don't know how to change the oven timer beep from quiet to loud. Yeah I know I am thick; it been a long time ago since my IQ was tested and then it was a paltry 161.

Then of course we get car manuals where they assume one single book will cover all 127 variants of the bloody car. It's full of crap like 'Automatic Nuclear Alerts (Optional)'. How the hell do I know if I have one? I just bought the 1.8 Zetec cus that's what's on the tail gate.

Many years ago, in my career, Rover Car tested their company executives' understanding of the functions of the trip computer on the Rover 800. They all failed so what chance have we?

Similarly, my company once made the trip computer for the Jaguar XJS and it had a serious design flaw which meant that most functions packed up after six months. No probs at all for in that 6 months, most drivers had given up the ghost on understanding the bloody thing and just left it in clock mode - which worked.