Minimalist documentation and the effective control of errors
Ard W. Lazonder · 1994
In learning to use software, people spend a considerable amount of time on dealing with errors. It could therefore be desirable to exploit users’ errors rather than to avoid them. In a minimal manual, error information is supposed to allow users to learn from their mistakes. An experiment was performed to validate this assumption. Two minimal manuals were compared, one containing error information and one from which all error information had been removed. All the error information was designed according to the criteria for effective error control. It thus contained information for detecting an error, knowing its nature and possibly its cause, and for correcting it. The results varied. On some aspects of skill the group with error information was superior. On other aspects they even performed worse than the control group. Based on these findings, a second, more analytical study was performed that focused on the learning phase. The results from both experiments are discussed and implications for further research are advanced.