==================================
=====       07-01-2016       =====
==================================

I was annoyed the other day by a headline I found on the website
of my university, reading: "If a product needs trainings or a user
manual, it is not usable". (That was David Lamas, Professor of
Interaction Design, saying in an interview.) Well, this is
bullshit and now I will tell you why.

First of all I have to admit that I like reading manuals. I even
read manuals on stuff that I know how to use because often I hope
to be enlightened on 'why' something works the way it is
working. I like manuals printed as a book and often find myself
printing out some PDF from the web just because standing up from
your computer desk, browsing the manual and pondering on some
tricky question will give you unexpected insights. (If you don't
believe it, try it out yourself.)

But the truth is: today manuals (and training) are considered
useless. Instead, devices are allegedly built so that even the
laziest user can use them. "Everyone knows, that if a machine is
not easy to use, no-one will buy it", says aforementioned Prof
Lamas. Is that so? Hell, no! Is a car easy to use? No it is not:
you need intensive training that will cost you a lot of money (at
least in my country). Has this ever stopped anybody from buying a
car?

Are today's devices built in a way that you can use them
intuitively? I doubt that. And it's not that we are not there
yet. Let's take Android as an example. The extraordinary success
of this OS - that has a market share of more than 80% at the time
of writing - is often attributed to it's ease of use. Now, I am
not an Android user myself but my wife and daughter are. Whenever
they turn to me with their tablet or phone because "something
disappeared", "is not working any more" or whatever, I can feel
that this OS is crap. (O.k. maybe not the OS but the applications
and GUI that are build on top of it.) There are settings hidden in
places where nobody will ever start looking for them. And if you
ask other users they will frankly admit that they don't know how
to set these things up. But they don't care. They will be happy to
run their everyday apps even if they don't know how to handle
Android. And after some time, when you have your 2nd and then your
3rd phone, you get used to it. Android has reprogrammed
you. Things that seemed awkward and inconvenient in the beginning
are happily accepted as "the way it's done".

Now why are there no user manuals any more? First: because writing
manuals is hard and unpleasant work. There is a significant
difference in writing code and writing documentation (or manuals),
even if Donald Knuth thinks otherwise (and I love the idea of
'literate programming', don't get me wrong). But I can feel it
whenever I try to document some installation procedures or
configuration stuff in my personal wiki. Writing a script or -
beware - a whole program is a very time consuming process but
every small progress will give you the reward of "Yes, it is
running" and now you can forget about it and concentrate on the
next step. In writing documentation there is no reward until the
damn thing is ready - if this is any reward for you.
Psychologically writing documentation is far more demanding.
Second: we live in a time of beta products. Firefox is throwing a
new version on me almost every week. And bugs don't matter any
more. They will be fixed - some day. What is important today is
the claim that you have something new, something shiny, that you
have an edge over your competitors. And the documentation can not
keep up with that speed. Because 'buggy' manuals are worse than no
manuals at all.

The UNIX system is known for its extraordinary documentation. We
all love the man pages. We all hate the man pages. But in the Free
Software Community there are numerous projects that I hesitate or
gave up using because of the lack of proper documentation. If
there is one thing we should invest more time and money in, it's
the "fucking manual". Because if you develop an application that
is there to stay, it will pay off in the long run.