The Manuals Problem

In the Healthcare industry I work in, we have to “validate” the product before we start selling it. In our context, the term “validate” means something more than just “to test”. Rather, it means “testing by the person who would be the actual user of the product”. Why is this so important? An example will clarify.

 

An engineer who is designing the product may use the touch interface on the screen and conclude it’s all good. But what if the nurse or doctor wears gloves in their work environment? Does the touch interface still work fine? Or maybe the terms used onscreen are obvious to engineers but make no sense to anyone else? It is to try and discover such issues that validation by a “real user” is critical.

 

But even our doctors who validate our products won’t help validate the manuals. Who wants to go over a manual and give feedback as to whether it is clear or not? This, of course, is a problem with all manuals, across product categories and across industries.

 

As Tim Harford says, we’d all love if we were given a “less mind-boggling set of instructions”. So why are manuals so useless? Because the “curse of knowledge” kicks in:

“(It refers to) the difficulty a well-informed person has in fully appreciating the depth of someone else’s ignorance.”

It’s very, very hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Even more so when their background, field of expertise, age, gender or nationality (to name just a few areas) are nothing like yours.

 

The journalism industry knows this point well. Which is why they have people to re-read articles, and not just for accuracy. Yet, as all of us know all too well, even then, most articles are hard to understand. Something Harford, as a journalist himself, acknowledges:

“If (even after all these checks) the final result is confusing, I apologise. But you should have seen the first draft.”

 

The knee-jerk reaction we think as the solution is:

“They just need to hire an idiot and watch him try to figure out.”

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. Because every idiot is different…