No quirks in owners manuals

My first car was a VW Squareback, with a very Zen stick shift. The shifter knob outlined four forward gears and reverse. The owners manual included a similar illustration, with additional tips that never mirrored reality.

There was no telling where second or third gear would be found on any given shift. The only way to drive this car was to get a feel for the general vicinity of each gear and then be playful.

My smartphone has similar quirks not found in the manual. It would have been helpful to read something like: “Place the phone down gently, or it will spontaneously reboot. If this is a problem, jam a piece of cardboard next to the battery to ensure a secure fit.” The troubleshooting section could be one sentence: “When something stops working, turn the phone off and on again.”

When my vacuum cleaner started to misbehave, I searched the online manual for instructions. I found the illustration for disassembling the lower plate to get to the beater brush, which the manual calls the “agitator.” What was more agitating than this brush was the sparse drawing overlaid with arrows in all directions. The few words of description were useless, and only after significant yanking and cursing did I find the tiny locking tabs that were the secret to success.

Other clues I wish were provided in owners manuals:

• To reset the low-tire-pressure gauge in my car, press the well-hidden button in the glove box.
• To restart my mother’s cable box after a service outage, hold the power button for five seconds.
• To restore service to my Internet radio, unplug and replug the power cord.

Simple solutions? Definitely. What made them difficult was finding the answers, which sometimes came from online chats, from calls to service departments, or trial-and-error approach.

I don’t envy technical writers who work on owners manuals. They don’t know much about their audience or how much their audience knows about their product. They don’t know which details to include or how detailed to make their answers.

One thing technical writers do know, and practice quite well, is to appease company lawyers and make sure any potential liability is clearly identified. Take this sentence from my car manual: “If you are in a collision in which airbags deploy, wash your hands and face with mild soap and water before eating.” Personally, I’ll go to the hospital first; I think my appetite would be ruined by the crash.

As much as I love to hate owners manuals, I like having one for reference. They may not tell me what I really need to know, and often offer too much unnecessary information, but you never know when they just might come in handy.

Now everyone is doing it

The Internet is like high school. Someone shows up with something shiny and new; pretty soon everyone wants or has the same thing.

Website design is showing just as much trend envy.

Splash pages used to be the big thing. Then flash animations. Now it’s the BIG PICTURE.

More and more websites spread a single photograph or graphic across the top half of the screen. There might be a few words, maybe a title and subhead in a large font. To find out more, you have to scroll down. Even then content is sparse, because, you know, people don’t like to read anymore.

Note to big-picture Web designers: Your pages are pretty. Your pages don’t tell me what I want to know. Ironically, the big picture approach doesn’t give me the big picture on content. A photograph isn’t always worth 1,000 words. Sometimes a photograph is just a photograph.

Granted, I’m a word person. Writing is what I do. Depending on the medium and the message, I tailor my approach for more or less content. Either way, content is key.

Words matter. People do like to read if it’s content they’re interested in, that engages them, that tells them what they need or want to know.

The first few big-picture websites I saw were intriguing in their novelty. And they were visually attractive, with beautifully done, professional photographs.

Now that more people are borrowing this design approach, using similar templates, the cracks are showing. The photos aren’t always so great; maybe they’re low-res or straight from a phone app. The content is sketchy. There’s no “there” there.

If I were just surfing the Internet for fun, these sites would be eye candy (at least the good ones would). But my surfing days are over; I click to find answers, information, content.

The good news is everything on the Internet seems to be a trend. I just can’t wait until the next one comes along.

Can you hear a pin drop?

I love the mobility of mobile phones. They go everywhere, and they’re smarter than ever.  I can get email, surf the Web, make transactions, and conduct business from anywhere.

The one thing I can’t do – or rarely do – is hear calls clearly.  I guess I’m showing my age by wanting call quality so good I could actually hear a pin drop.

Sprint boasted about pin-drop quality in its late '80s TV commercials. Closer to reality were the Verizon Wireless “Can you hear me now?” campaign, where Test Man drove me crazy with repetition. It was particularly annoying because I had to ask that same question almost every time I called someone. With unreliable cell phone service and poor sound quality, I often couldn’t hear the other person. At least I had an easy out if the conversation entered awkward territory: What? What did you say? You're breaking up.

I spend a lot of my working hours interviewing people for articles, and the conversations take place wherever the client happens to be. I’ve conducted interviews with people in airports, in a cab in Sweden, on Amtrak high-speed trains, and at the hospital. For my part, I got caught short and ended up on client call while walking my dog in nearby farm fields.

For all these conversations, at least one party was on a mobile phone, and none had pin-drop quality. Mobile access is awesome; the call clarity abysmal. Don’t even get me started on speakerphones.

I have gotten used to stopping conversations when something doesn’t sound quite right. Otherwise I get results like misheard song lyrics. No, Jimi Hendrix did not sing “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” in Purple Haze. And the executive did not just say “That’s a lot of poo”; it was “That’s a lot to do.”

There was a time when I could ask for a callback using a landline. Now landlines are the exception; mobile phones are the rule.

Even my mother has a mobile phone. She uses it to call my mobile. Then we both have trouble understanding the conversation.

Today's forecast is...pretty

After watching snowstorm after snowstorm hammer Boston, Philadelphia finally got its biggest snowfall of the season.

And it's a beauty. Fluffy white stuff. Bright blue sky this morning. Deep shadows for contrast.

Mother Nature finally got it right. Enough of the two-inch tease of flakes, only to be washed by rain into a slushy, slippery mess.

The timing and forecasting for this one worked out well, with enough advance notice that event cancellations and work-at-home arrangements could be made. It was much better to watch the storm from a warm and toasty house than stranded somewhere on the road.

Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I know plenty of people who are too tired of winter to care how pretty the landscape looks.

They probably would have preferred a view I had earlier this week. Something like this. It's tough to beat a sunny day in Southwest Florida.

But the trip wasn't all fun and games. There was a significant element of chore-cation involved, and I was anxious about a growing pile of projects back home on my desk.

Even so, it was a nice break from winter's chill and what had been a string of missed forecasts back home of snowstorms that always dumped the fun stuff somewhere else.

I was skeptical when Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, signalling six more weeks of winter. But it looks like that little groundhog was right on the money.