John Carroll's The Nurnberg Funnel and minimalist documentation
David K. Farkas, THOMAS RHYS WILLIAMS · IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication · 1990
In The Nurnberg Funnel, J.M. Carroll (1990) reviews and reformulates his research on minimalism, a well-known approach to both print and online software documentation in which explicit instruction is severely reduced and users learn through a predominantly exploratory process. The authors examine the book and conclude that although it is stimulating and valuable, Carroll fails to make a compelling case of minimalism as a broadly applicable alternative to the contemporary multicomponent documentation set.>