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- How To Write A Product Manual
- How To Write User Documentation
- How To Write Instruction Manual
- How To Write A Manual
May 10, 2011 A user manual is a formal writing piece with a specific structure, and should be written by someone who is intimately familiar with the product such as a technical writer or the product designer. Writing an effective user manual requires knowing who is going to be using the product, then writing it with these users in mind. Mar 07, 2019 A detailed document or small booklet that tells a user how to operate a product appropriately or how to install and use a particular computer software or application is named as user manual. Core purpose of the document is to guide people about fruitful use of mentioned product, service or any other thing. Elements of user manual template.
A user is a person who utilizes a computer or networkservice. Users of computer systems and software products generally lack the technical expertise required to fully understand how they work.[1]Power users use advanced features of programs, though they are not necessarily capable of computer programming and system administration.[2][3]
A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), account name, nickname (or nick) and handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.
Some software products provide services to other systems and have no direct end users.
- 2User account
End user[edit]
End users are the ultimate human users (also referred to as operators) of a software product. The term is used to abstract and distinguish those who only use the software from the developers of the system, who enhance the software for end users.[4] In user-centered design, it also distinguishes the software operator from the client who pays for its development and other stakeholders who may not directly use the software, but help establish its requirements.[5][6] This abstraction is primarily useful in designing the user interface, and refers to a relevant subset of characteristics that most expected users would have in common.
In user-centered design, personas are created to represent the types of users. It is sometimes specified for each persona which types of user interfaces it is comfortable with (due to previous experience or the interface's inherent simplicity), and what technical expertise and degree of knowledge it has in specific fields or disciplines. When few constraints are imposed on the end-user category, especially when designing programs for use by the general public, it is common practice to expect minimal technical expertise or previous training in end users.[7]
The end-user development discipline blurs the typical distinction between users and developers. It designates activities or techniques in which people who are not professional developers create automated behavior and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language.
Systems whose actor is another system or a software agent have no direct end users.
User account[edit]
A user's account allows a user to authenticate to a system and potentially to receive authorization to access resources provided by or connected to that system; however, authentication does not imply authorization. To log into an account, a user is typically required to authenticate oneself with a password or other credentials for the purposes of accounting, security, logging, and resource management.
Once the user has logged on, the operating system will often use an identifier such as an integer to refer to them, rather than their username, through a process known as identity correlation. In Unix systems, the username is correlated with a user identifier or user id.
Computer systems operate in one of two types based on what kind of users they have:
- Single-user systems do not have a concept of several user accounts.
- Multi-user systems have such a concept, and require users to identify themselves before using the system.
Each user account on a multi-user system typically has a home directory, in which to store files pertaining exclusively to that user's activities, which is protected from access by other users (though a system administrator may have access). User accounts often contain a public user profile, which contains basic information provided by the account's owner. The files stored in the home directory (and all other directories in the system) have file system permissions which are inspected by the operating system to determine which users are granted access to read or execute a file, or to store a new file in that directory.
While systems expect most user accounts to be used by only a single person, many systems have a special account intended to allow anyone to use the system, such as the username 'anonymous' for anonymous FTP and the username 'guest' for a guest account.
Username format[edit]
Various computer operating-systems and applications expect/enforce different rules for the format.
In Microsoft Windows environments, for example, note the potential use of:[8]
- User Principal Name (UPN) format – for example: UserName@Example.com
- Down-Level Logon Name format – for example: DOMAINUserName
Terminology[edit]
Some usability professionals have expressed their dislike of the term 'user' and have proposed changing it.[9]Don Norman stated that 'One of the horrible words we use is 'users'. I am on a crusade to get rid of the word 'users'. I would prefer to call them 'people'.'[10]
See also[edit]
- End-user computing, systems in which non-programmers can create working applications.
- End-user database, a collection of data developed by individual end-users.
- End-user development, a technique that allows people who are not professional developers to perform programming tasks, i.e. to create or modify software.
- End-user license agreement (EULA), a contract between a supplier of software and its purchaser, granting the right to use it.
References[edit]
- ^Jargon File entry for 'User'. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
- ^'Power Users' Guide'. sap.com. Retrieved 2015-01-14.
- ^'Windows Confidential: Power to the Power User'. microsoft.com. 2012. Retrieved 2015-01-14.
- ^'The State of the Art in End-User Software Engineering'(PDF). media.mit.edu. 2011-10-12. Retrieved 2015-01-11.
- ^'Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success'. 2004-05-06. Retrieved 2016-08-31.
- ^Rigsbee, Sarah, and William B. Fitzpatrick. 'User-Centered Design: A Case Study on Its Application to the Tactical Tomahawk Weapons Control System.'Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest 31.1 (2012): 76–82.
- ^'What is end user?'. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
- ^'User Name Formats'. MSDN. Developer technologies. Microsoft. Retrieved 2016-01-11.
The down-level logon name format is used to specify a domain and a user account in that domain [...].
- ^Don Norman. 'Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users'.
- ^'Don Norman at UX Week 2008 © Adaptive Path'. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the 'relicensing' terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.
A user guide, also commonly called a technical communication document or manual, is intended to give assistance to people using a particular system.[1] It is usually written by a technical writer, although user guides are written by programmers, product or project managers, or other technical staff, particularly in smaller companies.[2]
User guides are most commonly associated with electronic goods, computer hardware and software, although they can be written for any product.[3]
How To Write A Product Manual
Most user guides contain both a written guide and associated images. In the case of computer applications, it is usual to include screenshots of the human-machine interface(s), and hardware manuals often include clear, simplified diagrams. The language used is matched to the intended audience, with jargon kept to a minimum or explained thoroughly.
Contents of a user manual[edit]
The sections of a user manual often include:
- A cover page
- A title page and copyright page
- A preface, containing details of related documents and information on how to navigate the user guide
- A contents page
- A Purpose section. This should be an overview rather than detail the objective of the document
- An Audience section to explicitly state who is not as well as who is required to read, including optionals
- A Scope section is crucial as it also serves as a disclaimer, stating what is out-of-scope as well as what is covered
- A guide on how to use at least the main function of the system
- A troubleshooting section detailing possible errors or problems that may occur, along with how to fix them
- A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
- Where to find further help, and contact details
- A glossary and, for larger documents, an index
History[edit]
How To Write User Documentation
User guides have been found with ancient devices. One example is the Antikythera Mechanism[4], a 2,000 year old Greek analogue computer that was found off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in the year 1900. On the cover of this device are passages of text which describe the features and operation of the mechanism.
As the software industry was developing, the question of how to best document software programs was undecided. This was a unique problem for software developers, since users often became frustrated with current help documents[5]. Some considerations for writing a user guide that developed at this time include:
- the use of plain language[5]
- length and reading difficulty[5]
- the role of printed user guides for digital programs[6]
- user-centered design[6]
Computer software manuals and guides[edit]
User manuals and user guides for most non-trivial software applications are book-like documents with contents similar to the above list. They may be distributed either in print or electronically. Some documents have a more fluid structure with many internal links. The Google Earth User Guide[7] is an example of this format. The term guide is often applied to a document that addresses a specific aspect of a software product. Some usages are Installation Guide, Getting Started Guide, and various How to guides. An example is the Picasa Getting Started Guide.[8]
In some business software applications, where groups of users have access to only a sub-set of the application's full functionality, a user guide may be prepared for each group. An example of this approach is the Autodesk Topobase 2010 Help[9] document, which contains separate Administrator Guides, User Guides, and a Developer's Guide.
References[edit]
How To Write Instruction Manual
- ^'Online Technical Writing: User Guides'. hcexres@io.com. Retrieved 13 August 2009.
- ^Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly, The Elements of Technical Writing, pg. 143. New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1993. ISBN0020130856
- ^'Manuals Brain - all useful manuals at one place!'. manualsbrain.com. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
- ^'Boffins decipher manual for 2,000-year-old Ancient Greek computer'. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
- ^ abcChafin, Roy (January 1982). 'User Manuals: What Does the User Really Need?'. SIGDOC '82 Proceedings of the 1st annual international conference on systems documentation: 36–39 – via ACM Digital Library.
- ^ abMcKee, John (August 1986). 'Computer User Manuals in Print: Do They Have a Future?'. ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation. 12: 11–16 – via ACM Digital Library.
- ^'Google Earth User Guide'. Google. 4 June 2009. Retrieved 13 August 2009.
- ^'Getting Started with Picasa: Getting Started Guide'. Google. 15 June 2009. Retrieved 13 August 2009.
- ^'Autodesk Topobase 2010 Help'. Autodesk. Retrieved 13 August 2009.
- ^Manualdevices - Free User Manual 'Manualdevices - Free User Manual ', Retrieved on 01 August 2019.