{"id":1650,"date":"2014-04-10T01:14:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T06:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2014-03-10T08:21:50","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T13:21:50","slug":"how-to-instruct-people-how-to-do-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2014\/04\/how-to-instruct-people-how-to-do-something\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Instruct People How to do Something"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>I point back to a classic but little-known work on instructing people how to do something.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Way back in time in the mid-1980s (yes, I am that old), I stumbled onto <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/write-usable-manual-Professional-writing\/dp\/0894950525\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1394457222&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+to+write+a+usable+user+manual\">a book written by Edmond H. Weiss<\/a> titled <em>How to Write a Usable User Manual<\/em>. I thought it was a basic book that reiterated what everyone knew. I have now concluded that this little-known book is a work of genius that somehow has been lost to the world.<\/p>\n<p>Weiss shows how to instruct people how to do things. Step 1 followed by step 2 followed by step 3. That is too simple to occupy a book, right? That is too simple because everyone knows how to do that, right?<\/p>\n<p>I wish the answers to those questions were, &#8220;yes&#8221; but they aren&#8217;t. It breaks my heart and hurts my head to daily encounter lousy instructions and unusable user manuals.<\/p>\n<p>Buy this book! Use it. Follow it. Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips I point back to a classic but little-known work on instructing people how to do something. Way back in time in the mid-1980s (yes, I am that old), I stumbled onto a book written by Edmond H. Weiss titled How to Write a Usable User Manual. I thought it was a basic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,12,102,5],"tags":[154,135,217,128],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-design","category-teaching","category-writing","tag-communication","tag-design","tag-teaching","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}