masters thesis kimmo_salmela_2_0
DESCRIPTION
This document discusses the differences in usability of pictures, video and text in the context of hardware installation manuals. It is my Master's thesis for the University of Helsinki and Nokia Siemens Networks, submitted in late 2013 and presents the results of a field research I made.TRANSCRIPT
THE UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
THE POWER OF THE PICTURE VERSUS
THE WISDOM OF THE WORD
A comparative study on the usability of
installation manuals in written, illustrated
and video formats
Kimmo Salmela
Master’s thesis
English translation
Department of Modern Languages
University of Helsinki
October 2013
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Table of contents
1 Introduction: the target of this study............................................................3
2 Background..................................................................................................5
3 Field survey...............................................................................................13
4 Approach to the interviews .......................................................................21
5 The results of the study..............................................................................26
6 Assessment of the key hypotheses.............................................................42
7 Summary....................................................................................................47
8 References..................................................................................................49
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List of figures
Figure 1: Excerpt from The Installation Quick Guide..................................18
Figure 2: Excerpt from the Installation Manual...........................................19
Figure 3: Excerpt from The Installation Multimedia....................................20
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1 Introduction: the target of this study
The purpose of this study is to compare the usability of written, illustrated and video
format hardware installation manuals from the perspective of the users. It is done as a
collaborative project between The University of Helsinki and the hardware research
and development personnel of the telecommunications network supplier Nokia
Solutions and Networks (NSN). It will make my master's thesis for the university.
From the standpoint of the University of Helsinki, the study is expected to give an
idea of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the three different forms of
communication mentioned above, and the reasons behind them. While the focus of
this study is on hardware installation manuals as a source of information for their
users, I believe that the results may give some useful information to producers of
other product-related documentation, and perhaps even beyond, to anybody dealing
with media which combines text, still pictures and/or video images in any field of
communications.
NSN is a global supplier of mobile telecommunications networks and related
services. From the company's perspective, the study has the practical target of
providing guidelines for future development of their customer documentation. It can
possibly also give information that helps improving the usability of the actual
hardware produced by the company. In concrete terms, the following goals are at the
forefront:
▪ Improving the quality of the documentation and its perceived usability, if needed.
▪ Optimizing the production and maintenance costs of the documentation.
▪ Finding out if investment in documentation in video format, in particular, is feasible. Video is often seen as the media which provides the best user experience. However, professional videos are also fairly expensive to make and update.
▪ Finding out if availability of high-quality customer documentation helps in cutting the other hardware design and manufacturing costs.
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The aim of this study is to provide answers for at least some of the following
questions:
▪ Does the hardware documentation used as the source material of this study meet the requirements of the users in general, or are there specific needs for development?
▪ Which formats of documentation (written text, still picture, video footage) do the users prefer to have as their reference when performing different types of tasks?
▪ Which formats work best at different phases of the overall installation procedure: installation planning, practical work on site, and in problem-solving situations during the installation?
▪ What are the reasons behind the possible differences in the user experience provided by the various formats?
▪ Are there any general guidelines that can be presented for the production of hardware installation documentation, especially when it comes to the question of which format to use, and where?
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2 Background
2.1 Field of this study
Though made under the Department of Modern Languages, this study falls within the
scope of technical communications.
Its key reference in terms of theory is Tytti Suojanen's licenciate thesis Technical
Communication Research: Dissemination, Reception, Utilization (University of
Tampere, 2000). Suojanen's focus in her work is, on one hand, finding out what kind
of professionals the Finnish society of technical communicators consists of and, on
the other hand, how research information on technical communications is transferred,
received and utilized by these professionals. While her target is different than mine,
some of the topics covered by her are also central to this study, such as the nature
and definitions of technical knowledge, and the characteristics of the process of
transferring knowledge and information between individuals. She also touches the
topic of usability of texts, which seems to be a topic fairly seldom discussed in our
tradition of technical communication research.
As Suojanen (2000) points out, referring to Barnum and Carliner (1993:3), technical
communication means simply transfer of knowledge from those who know to those
who need to know. “We are basically dealing with the interaction of man and
machine where technical communication acts as the bridge”, she elaborates further.
An interesting transformation happens when technical communiction products are
created to serve in this bridge function: data, which has originated as knowledge of
the designers of the equipment is made into a communication product (a manual, for
example), which has the purpose of teaching the skill of performing certain
procedure(s) to the professional installers. As the original knowledge is entered into a
communication product, it is transferred into what we can call information. When the
information is adopted by the installers as they use the communication product, it is
again transferred into knowledge, now only possessed by the users. It becomes part
of their intellectual property and personal capability, which they can now put to use
in their everyday work.
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Suojanen (2000: 44) describes this transformation, referring to Savolainen (1985:
19): “knowledge is a property of the individual, enabling and orientating him to
function as an individual and member of society, whereas information refers to
processes taking place between individuals. Information can, however, become
knowledge once it is adopted.” The concepts of knowledge and information are
hierarchical in that knowledge can contain information, but information does not
encompass the entire scope of the concept of knowledge (Laaksovirta 1986:
summary 5).
It is the task of the technical communicator who creates the communication product
to handle this process of transferring the designers' individual knowledge into
generic information, and ensure that it is presented in a suitable way to the users, so
that they can adopt it as their own knowledge. When performing this task, the
technical communicator also decides about the suitable media for the information,
based on the requirements set by the circumstances it will be used in and its target
audiences: whether it is expressed in the form of text, still pictures, video footage, or
perhaps some other medium. The requirements for the results of this transformation
process – the communication products and the information in them – are set by the
users and based on their needs. Referring to an unpublished article by Carliner that
dates back to 1999, Suojanen (2000: 35) states that technical communication
provides users with access to information on three levels: physical, emotional and
intellectual. She points out that research has concentrated on covering the facets of
physical access (i.e., how readers find the information they seek) and emotional
access (i.e., cross-cultural communication and getting the reader's attention).
However, she says that less research has been made on intellectual access: when
readers find the information they are looking for, can they understand it and make
use of it?
This study aims to provide answers to the last one of the questions presented above.
The emphasis is on making qualitative comparison between the various media,
drawing on the experiences the users of the documentation have had in real-life
situations and circumstances.
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Already in 1996, the Society for Technical Communication approved a research
agenda intended to guide the future research in the field of technical communication.
Among the ten key entries on the agenda, one read:
“designing for visualization: we need guidelines for making decisions about when to use text, when to use visuals, and how to integrate the two.”
Since 1996, much has happened within technical communication, not least because
of the huge increase in the use of Internet and media such as online video. However,
the usability of of technical communication products remains today as vital a subject
of research as back in 1996; hence the topic of this study.
2.2 About the choice of the study's source material
From the perspective of technical communication products, this study concentrates
strictly on hardware installation manuals. Why put the focus on documents of this
type? The answer is simple: for the sake of simplicity. The topic of this study – the
strengths and weaknesses of different forms of communication and comparison
between them - is quite complex and abstract by nature. When beginning the work, I
felt that in contrast, it was necessary to use source material that is plain as possible,
so that dealing with the complexity of the key topic and generating an analysis that is
understandable would be easier - or possible at all.
But what is it that makes me believe that hardware manuals make a suitably simple
media to serve as the basis of this study?
First of all, hardware is typically very concrete: it can be seen, it can be touched, it
can be moved, it can be measured and it can be broken into pieces and reassembled
again. There is nothing abstract about it when compared with, say, many other types
of products we encounter in our everyday life. For example, the software products
housed inside the hardware of telecommunications equipment are very different: one
cannot really see them or touch them. A piece of hardware typically has even a smell
of its own, whereas it is nearly impossible to even imagine what a piece of software
would smell like. And only a qualified engineer can break a software product into
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separate components and then build a new, working entity out of the various pieces;
whereas we can imagine even a child reconstructing a telecommunications
equipment cabinet out of the parts of an existing one in such a way that it can do its
job (albeit it may not be in no way perfect). In short, hardware in itself is simple to
deal with (although “simple” does not always translate to “easy”).
Why then concentrate on installation manuals of all types of hardware
documentation that exists? The answer is similar to the one above: the mounting of a
piece of equipment is a straightforward process with a clear goal: to get the
equipment up and running in such way that it works reliably and provides the
required performance throughout its lifetime. Other manuals also exist for the
hardware used in telecommunications networks, but they typically deal with issues
that have a higher level of abstraction. One example are installation planning
manuals. The purpose of these documents is to ensure that the conditions in the
premises where telecommunications hardware is installed are such that the
equipment works properly throughout its life cycle. They provide specifications for,
say, the humidity and temperature of the air, the load the floors need to be able to
carry, the space that is required for the personnel when they are maintaining the
equipment and the clearance needed for running the huge amount of cabling that
connects to it, among many other preconditions that need to be fulfilled. Those
manuals deal with topics which, while often referred to in numerical values, are more
relative than the issues encountered in the installation process and as such, more
complex when it comes to describing them.
In order to put the information contained in hardware manuals into a wider context,
we can refer to Hackos and Stevens (1997: 53-66), who divide information into four
categories:
▪ Phased information describes those steps that users have to perform in order to reach their goal
▪ Descriptive information provides explanations, definitions, and theoretical information, which helps users put the phased information into the right context
▪ Background information consists of, for instance, statistics, result calculations and tables which the users may need occasionally
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▪ Practitioning information is meant for users who, in addition to just performing a task, want to get deeper into it and find creative ways of performing it.
In the model of Hackos and Stevens, installation manuals present primarily phased
information (complemented by background information), whereas the
aforementioned installation planning manuals contain a combination of descriptive,
background and practitioning information. Installation manuals just aim to show how
certain procedures are best performed, nothing more.
The process of mounting hardware is also simple in terms of the language used.
True, the terminology one encounters in technical installation the manuals can be
difficult to learn and understand. However, one rarely (if ever at all) encounters
figures of speech, for example, in installation manuals. The manuals do not feature
any syntactically complex sentences – at least they should not. There is no word-play
in them, and writing techniques like rhyming are definitely out of the question. The
structuring of the text is done without any artistic concerns. Hardware installation
manuals offer a very stripped-down form of communication, which seems to be well
suited for the purposes of this study.
And finally, the collection of manuals used as the source material of this study
presented the rare occasion when the same content was available for examination in
three different formats, all made for exactly the same purpose. Such an opportunity
does not seem to become available that often.
2.3 What makes a good manual?
According to Suojanen, Mike Markel has defined technical communication as the
process of creating, designing and transmitting technical information so that people
can understand it easily, safely, effectively and efficiently. It is noteworthy that
already on the level of definition, he refers to attributes contributing to usability:
grasping the content should go “easily, safely, effectively and efficiently”. In keeping
with Markel’s view, Suojanen (2000: 21) herself states that a technical document
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should be accurate, safe, efficient and easy to use. In order to be capable of serving
its purpose, a technical manual simply has to meet certain usability requirements.
But to be precise, what are those requirements in more detail – for an installation
manual, in particular? Based on my own experience of using and producing
producing them, I would highlight the attributes listed below.
• Ease of reading and understanding. Installation of equipment is typically a
phase which users want to get done as quickly as possible, so that they can
just start using the equipment. In the course of the installation, time spent
referring to manuals is often seen as time wasted by the users. Hence, writers
of manuals should ensure that the information in them is to the point and
presented in a way that allows the users to learn it as quickly as possible.
• Compactness. In today's highly competitive marketplace, installation and use
of products must be made quick and intuitive in order to maintain sufficient
efficiency and to ensure that installation and maintenance costs are kept in
check. While much of the burden of fulfilling this requirement falls on the
product itself, manuals also have a key role in meeting it. The typical user of
technical information is impatient and wants results quickly in his search of
information, as Ågren and Kantojärvi (2008: 71) point out. The best way to
enable quick finding of information is to make the manuals compact enough
by leaving out all unnecessary information.
• Completeness. Despite the requirement for compactness, manuals need to
cover every facet of the installation and use, since finding information from
alternative sources (for example, user forums in the Internet) is typically
time-consuming and often requires a lot of effort from the user. Many users
also like leaf through their manuals prior to mounting to equipment, just to
get an overall picture of the capabilities of the product and the requirements
for its installation and use. The completeness of a manual is a prerequisite for
these users.
• Exactness and reliability. The information in the manual needs to be exact
and well verified in order to save the users from wasting time on unnecessary
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troubleshooting procedures or, even more importantly, to prevent the users
from causing harm to themselves or the product.
• Ease of finding information. When performing troubleshooting procedures or
just checking back on a fact they have learned, the users often want to refer to
just a short section of the manual and find the information they need quickly.
Logical structure and good indexing of the document are instrumental in
allowing them to do this.
• Ease of cross-referencing. A good manual allows the user to easily cross-
check between different sections in the manual, as each piece of information
in it may be topically linked with other content in the document, to be found
in completely different parts of the manual.
• Consistency across all formats. Manuals are often published in various
formats: html for the Internet, a pdf or Word file for stand-alone usage on a
computer, video formats for multimedia applications, and other types of
reproductions... A consistent user experience across different media is often
of fundamental importance for the user for easy finding of information using
the media which is suitable for the moment.
As we can see from the list above, manuals are used in different ways in different
situations. Users also have their personal preferences. In the field of consumer
research, Schriver (1997: 213-214) found that 80 % of the users preferred just
scanning their manuals or using them as a referenece, whereas 15 % reported reading
manuals through. Just 4 % said they never read them at all. The last figure is
surprisingly low, considering that the study covered usage amongst ordinary
consumers, who are not tied by similar legal constraints set by safety laws as
professional users of equipment are. Thus, it seems that even with ordinary
consumers, a manual is an integral part of a product and its quality contributes to the
users overall satisfaction with it.
Ågren and Kantojärvi (2008: 71-72) summarize the manual's contribution to the
perceived user experience of the entire product as follows: “The technical
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documentation should provide information in a way that is easily accessible and easy
to understand.” Failure to meet this requirement will “give an unattractive image to
the company and their product brand”.
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3 Field survey
When it came to the practical task of carrying out the study and obtaining proper data
for its basis, turning to the real users of the manuals, professional installers, came
naturally as the choice for an approach. Information was collected from them by
means of interviews conducted face-to-face or over the phone. E-mail queries were
also made, to learn some additional details after the interviews. A ready-made
questionnaire form was used as the basis of the interviews, in order to ensure that the
results gained from them were uniform and comparable. Thus, they fell in the
category of structured interviews (Alastalo, 2005: 66). However, the format of the
questionnaire was not followed rigidly when this was not necessary. Additional
questions to clarify details were made during the interviews, and questions were
simply skipped sometimes when an interviewee had already given the relevant
information earlier on, when answering another question. All in all, practises
recommended by Alastalo (2005: 72) were followed when carrying out the
interviews.
In terms of their subject matter, the interviews combined elements of task analysis
and audience analysis. Task analysis means that information is obtained on how a
text is used by the readers in the context it was created for. Suojanen (2000: 31)
refers to Wright (1981: 11) when she explains, what task analysis means from the
perspective of the user:
“Task analysis has three components concerning the reader: he must find the relevant information, he must be able to understand that information and, finally, he may have to reinterpret that information to answer a certain query.”
Audience analysis, on the other hand, is about finding out who the real users are and
how they behave. In the field of audience analysis, this study falls under the category
of feedback-driven audience analysis (as distinguished from the other forms of
audience analysis: classification-driven audience analysis and intuition-driven
audience analysis). Suojanen (2000: 30) describes feedback-driven audience analysis
as follows:
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“Feedback-driven audience analysis views real readers in the process of interpreting texts. This model springs from two research traditions: one focuses on how people read and interpret texts (e.g., reading comprehension and cognitive psychology), and the other focuses on people reading and interpreting text in context (e.g., rhetoric and cultural studies). The method became popular in the 1980's and 1990's among professionals in usability testing, human-interface design and user-centered design of products: 'understanding the user' became the focus.”
Of the two research traditions behind feedback-driven analysis mentioned above, this
study rather follows the latter one, with the focus on people reading and interpreting
text in context.
3.1 Phases of the project
The project covered the steps listed below, which tended to overlap in real life.
1) Planning
▪ Definition of the purpose of the study
▪ Selection of the method of the study and documents to be covered
▪ Definition of the theoretical framework of the study
▪ Definition of the types of personnel to be interviewed
2) Preparations
▪ Definition of the use cases to be presented in the interviews
▪ Writing of the questionnaire used in the interviews
▪ Making of pilot interviews
▪ Revisioning of the questionnaire
▪ Shortlisting of the interviewees and contacting them
3) Making of the interviews
▪ Interviews on installation sites
▪ Remote interviews using phone
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▪ Intermediate evaluation of study results
▪ Additional round of questioning via e-mail
4) Distillation of data into insights
▪ Aggregation of the data
▪ Analysis of the data
▪ Drawing of conclusions
▪ Commenting rounds within the project team
5) Packaging of the study results for publishing
▪ Writing of the study report for NSN
▪ Commenting rounds within the project team for the study report
▪ Writing of the master's thesis paper for Helsinki University (including filtering out of sensitive information)
▪ Circulation and commenting rounds for the master's thesis
6) Finalization of the project
▪ Publishing for relevant audiences
▪ Planning of the implementation of the results at NSN
▪ Planning of possible further research.
The project was started in October, 2012. Due to the difficulty in finding suitable
interviewees, it ran a few months longer than we had expected. Our original deadline
of May 2013 (for completing phases 1-5) had to be extended to August in the same
year.
3.2 Selection of the interviewees
In order to find persons with appropriate experience to be interviewed, personnel
working in the test laboratories of NSN in the Helsinki region in Finland was initially
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contacted. From there, the search was expanded to the company's laboratories at
various parts of the world. Simultaneously, professionals working in the company's
customer-facing teams, such as project managers, were gotten into touch with. With
the help of these people, a few interviews were also agreed with installers doing
hands-on work in the installations in the premises of NSN customers,
telecommunication operators.
The study was initially planned to cover some or all of the following countries: India,
parts of South America, China, Japan, Finland and USA. However, finding
interviewees in the Americas turned out to be difficult, so instead, installers in
several European countries were contacted, with success.
Some of the interviews made simply did not provide the kind of information which
would have been relevant for the purposes of this study, and their results had to be
excluded from it. In some cases, the reason was that the interviewees' line of work
was not within the field of hardware installations, but rather other phases of work in
the commissioning of the product, for example work on the software. In a few other
cases, the interviewees had not used the manuals at all, due to having learned the
installation procedure at an early stage of product development, when no manuals
had been available yet.
3.3 Products the study was made on
In order to gain results which are uniform and allow cross-referencing within the
study, we decided to choose one group of products from NSN's entire portfolio to
concentrate on: the Advanced TCA (ATCA) platform. The key product within the
platform we put our focus on was the Open Mobile Switching Center Server (MSC
Server). Its function of this product is to connect the voice calls taking place in
mobile telecommunications networks. In terms of network architecture, the MSC
Server is located in the Core Network domain, the central part of the network, which
processes the huge volume of traffic fed to the network from its users via its
numerous base stations.
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While already widely in use around the world, the product platform is still fairly
new, and selection of its documentation for source material was expected to enable
collection of relevant information from both installations already done as well as
those being made during the interviews. However, in order to achieve a large enough
sample, other products based on the ATCA platform were also included within the
scope of the study, since there was no certainty that all installers to be interviewed
would have worked with the MSC Server yet. This was not expected to undermine
the uniformity of the study results, as the construction of these additional products is
essentially the same as the MSC Server's.
The choice of products turned out to be plausible: indeed, some of the installers
interviewed had not worked with MSC Server. Nevertheless, the information
obtained from them was compatible with the data received from the other
respondents.
3.4 Construction of the selected products
Each one of the products (also called network elements) within the ATCA platform
feature different types of blades, in which dedicated software is run to perform a
variety of functions. The blades are housed in specific shelves in an equipment
cabinet. The cabinet comes in two versions, which primarily differ in terms of the
footprint they occupy; one version is wider, the other is more narrow, with the
equipment squeezed more tightly into the smaller space available. The existence of
two different versions of the cabinet did not turn out to be any problem when it came
to analysing and comparing the data gathered in the interviews.
As the ATCA platform products all connect to a big telecommunications network,
they have different types of external connections for routing the data in the network
from one user to another. The network connections can be implemented in a variety
of ways; optical cables are often the preferred option. The network elements also
have data connections used for controlling the blades from an operation and
maintenance center, as well as other interfaces typical of electrical equipment,
notably power supply and grounding connections.
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3.5 Selected installation manual types
For the ATCA platform, the customer documentation exists in the three different
formats we have already discussed earlier: written texts (available only in English),
illustrations by means of still pictures and video footage. The document library
includes three manual types, each of which uses primarily one of the three
documentation formats mentioned. The manuals are as follows:
• The Installation Quick Guide: this manual has the whole installation
procedure described fairly comprehensively in the form of still pictures, with
written text used only where absolutely necessary. Our assumption was that
this manual alone is used by the installer whenever mere illustrations by
means of still pictures are sufficient to give the installer the information
needed.
Figure 1: Excerpt from The Installation Quick Guide.
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• The Installation Manual: this document is a comprehensive guide to the
installation procedure, and it has both illustrated and written instructions for
each and every step. Our assumption was that the installer will refer to this
manual whenever s/he needs written instructions.
Figure 2: Excerpt from the Installation Manual.
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• The Installation Multimedia: this video, complete with a voice-over narrative,
provides installation instructions filmed in real time, showing qualified
personnel doing the mounting work on site. Our assumption was that the
installer will refer to this manual whenever s/he prefers video as the source of
instructions.
Figure 3: Excerpt from The Installation Multimedia
However, the assumptions presented above, of the formats preferred by the users in
relation with the manual types used are just generalizations. In documentation in
general (including the aforementioned manuals), one form of presenting the
information is typically in the key role, but it is often mixed with other forms on
different levels: text may be embedded in pictures and among them, video is likely to
include also still pictures together with written and spoken text, and it is a common
practice to emphasize and clarify crucial information in written text by adding a
picture to illustrate it - or today even by means of embedding a video or audio file in
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a document. In practice, deeper analysis is required in order to gain real insights on
the users' preferences of format.
Arguably, the very fact that various media is so often used side by side in
documentation is in itself proof for the supposition that different formats have
different strengths and weaknesses. Were it not so, there would not be need to use the
various forms of communication to complement one another.
4 Approach to the interviews
How could the installation procedure be examined in such a way that the differences
between the various formats of communication used for depicting it in manuals
become clearly pronounced? And how could the way their differences affect the user
experience of the installers be expressed in concrete terms? These were the key
questions that puzzled me when I started looking for an approach for the interviews
with the installers.
It looked like the answers would lay behind further questions, ones that were aimed
at digging deeper into the details of the installation procedure: what is the act of
installing equipment really about? What does one really do when mounting
hardware?
The answer seemed to be that, in essence, mounting of hardware is just a repeated
series of movements made by the installer: getting components to their proper places
and attaching them to one another. In fact, the act of attaching components together
can be viewed as a sequence of movements in its own right. The job of the manuals
would then be to depict and/or describe these movements in a way which would
make them easy to learn by the installers.
This all made sense; only, there still did not seem to be a firm basis for qualitative
comparison between the different forms of communication, beyond the level of the
users' personal preference. Movement can certainly be illustrated by means of a
picture. It can be equally well described by using words. How can one tell, which
one of those presentations would really serve the users better, beyond personal
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preferences? It seemed that in order to find a way to spot tangible differences in the
user experience, one had to drill down even deeper. So one more question remained
to be asked: what is movement in itself – how could it be characterized?
The answer was that there are four attributes of movement, which need to be clearly
presented when describing how an object should be moved:
▪ direction in which an object is moved
▪ speed of the object
▪ amount of power applied to the object in order to make it move
▪ the starting and ending points of the movement.
Those four attributes allow describing motion in a way which is in accordance with
the way it has been explained in Newtonian physics (Newton, 1999: 416-417),
although in a simplified manner. The three first attributes are variable: direction,
speed and power applied to the object can change in the course of movement. We
can assume that the job of the installation instructions is to provide information on
those four attributes at every instance when an individual component or some other
object, a tool for instance, is moved as a part of the installation procedure.
At this point, it finally started to look like there might be a sound basis for
comparison: perhaps there are differences between the expressive capabilities of the
various forms of content, such that become visible when certain attributes of
movement are depicted. And if it would turn out that no such differences really exist,
at least it would be interesting to find out!
4.1 Key hypotheses of the study
So my basic assumption was that the strengths and weaknesses of the various formats
to present the information – text, still pictures and video footage for the purposes of
this study – become visible when we look at their strength in illustrating the four
attributes of movement: direction, speed, power applied, as well as the starting and
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ending points. In addition, the strength or weakness of each form of communication
in depicting the objects to be moved plays an important role here: the installers,
naturally, need to be able to identify the objects themselves, too.
With these things in mind, I started trying to figure out what the strengths of each
way of presenting information might be. Based on my thoughts, I formulated four
key hypotheses which were supposed to describe the usability of the different
documentation formats in concrete terms. The interviews, then, were expected to
provide a means to verify in real life the viability of the hypotheses, which read:
1. Compared with written word, still images are superior in helping to identify
three-dimensional objects and in depicting the direction of their movement. A
mere glance at a page of an illustrated document can give the user equally
much information as many lines of text in written instructions do, and provide
this information more reliably.
2. Written text can provide accuracy that may be difficult to achieve in
instructions based on images. This would apply to a situation in which one
part or detail in a piece of equipment has to be identified amongst a group of
many identical parts or details, for example when connecting cables in a hub
that has many similar connectors. If a co-ordinate system has been applied to
the hub, a written table probably serves the user much better in this kind of a
situation than even a detailed picture of the hub could.
3. Written text is very useful in describing variation in movement or the power
that needs to be applied to an the object when moving it. One or two words
(for example, asking the user to move an object “gently” or to push it “with
force”) can quickly provide the user with the relevant information, which
would require using additional symbols in case a picture was used in the same
situation. Even if additional symbols are used in a picture, they may easily
turn out to be ambiguous to the user, because they add a symbolical layer to a
presentation which otherwise depicts a situation in a strictly realistic manner.
4. Video footage in itself has accuracy much higher than written text (except
when identifying one detail among many similar ones) and equally high as
still pictures. However, video runs in real time, which can make finding the
information on an individual action as a part of a procedure very slow. Also,
24
quick referencing between two separate sections placed apart in the same
video can be laborious.
With every format of documentation, there are techniques that help overcoming the
limitations of the given format up to a degree. However, it is reasonable to think that
a good user experience is typically achieved by making information as intuitive to
absorb as possible, and by using the inherent strengths of the form of communication
chosen to the maximum. Hence, it is plausible to verify in real life the relative
strengths of the various formats of documentation.
Finally, there are also legal constraints for providing information in documentation:
certain warnings of risks need to be explicitly stated in the documents in the form of
written text, as stated by national product safety laws. The ways in which this kind of
information must be communicated – in the form of notice, warning, caution and
danger clauses – has been defined in two international standards: ANSI Z535:6 -
2006 (effective in the US and many related countries) and ISO 3864-2: 2004 (its
counterpart for Europe and related countries). The two standards have been
harmonized in 2008.
4.2 Installation phases covered in the interviews
In order to verify the key assumptions, four phases in the installation procedure were
selected for deeper examination in the interviews. Each of these phases brought to
the forefront one or more attributes of movement, which was expected to be more
easy to depict using certain type of documentation rather than another type. In a
couple of the phases, depiction of objects or their parts so that they can be identified
easily played an important role.
The installation phases selected and the crucial attribute(s) of movement each one of
them were supposed to highlight were as follows:
• Installation of the external power supply cables: since there is only a narrow
space in the cabinet for cabling, the correct routing of the cables is important
25
at this phase to ensure that each and every cable is placed in the correct
position for maximised use of space. This brings the depiction of direction
and placement of the cables to the forefront in the documentation, as well as
the need to show connections of the cables clearly.
• Installation of the equipment shelves inside the cabinet: the equipment
shelves contain the blades to be installed, and with a weight of around 100
kilograms for each shelf, they are heavy and thus difficult to move, especially
to lift. Indicating the weight of the equipment and the physical power
required to get it in its proper place is crucial at this phase of the procedure.
• Installation of the cabinet's internal cables: the internal cables provide the
connections between the equipment housed in the cabinet. The depiction of
the exact placement of the cables when running them and connecting them is
a crucial at this phase. As with the external power cables, showing the
direction and changes in it is equally important.
• Installation of a support frame to facilitate the mounting of the equipment
shelves: Since the equipment shelves are heavy constructions, a separate
support shelf needs to be installed for the duration of the mounting of them to
make the work easier and to ensure the safety of the installers. However, the
support frame in itself is a light piece of hardware, which just needs to be
attached precisely and firmly to its position. Indicating the gentleness of
movement needed to do this and the exact position of the part when attached
to the cabinet play an instrumental role here.
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5 The results of the study
The interviewees for the study were found through the global organization of NSN.
All in all, 15 installation professionals were interviewed for the study. Only three of
the interviewees (20 %) were from external companies. A clear majority of 12
interviewees (80 %) were recruited from the various test laboratories of NSN.
The experiences and working practises of installers working within NSN and the
outside companies appeared to be fundamentally similar, with no radical differences
to be noticed. The problematic phases in the installation process and the solutions
they applied to them were largely the same. As for their attitude towards providing
feedback, the personnel of NSN was already used to reporting their findings to
product development staff and they were fairly matter-of-fact about it. The
interviewees from outside companies were surprisingly eager to share their
experiences and suggest improvements where they saw appropriate. I had expected
that there might be some difficulty in getting them to answer the questions in
sufficient depth. However, they turned out to be generous with their time and quite
enthusiastic about the opportunity to have a chance to share their experiences and
ideas to improve the equipment, installation procedure and documentation.
The overall feedback on the manuals was very good, whether in terms of the quality
of the content or the way it was presented.
5.1 Background information on the respondents
The first section of the interview (questions 1-7) comprised questions on the
background of the interviewees: their personal details, nationality, age, and
experience. The people we managed to get in touch with came primarily from the
Western Europe and Asia, and their nationalities were as follows:
▪ Japanese: 1
▪ Chinese: 1
▪ Indian: 2
27
▪ Greek: 1
▪ Russian (working in Estonia): 1
▪ Irish (working in the UK): 1
▪ Italian: 2
▪ Finnish: 6
The average age of the persons interviewed was 42 years, and they were all male.
Their average experience in the field of telecommunications was 17 years, and they
had worked on telecommunication equipment installation for around 15 years, of
which three years on the ATCA equipment installations. All of them had at least one
year of experience of mounting the ATCA hardware. This means that none of them
was no longer at the stage of learning the installation, which is when the manuals
probably play the most crucial role to them. However, the interviewees were able to
give quite precise feedback even on their first experiences of the manuals and the
equipment.
As the customer documentation of NSN is primarily delivered in the English, the
next question was about the English skills of the respondents. While only one
respondent out of 13 was a native speaker of English, the respondents reported good
language skills with an average of 3.4 in a scale of 1 (beginner) to 5 (native speaker).
One interviewee did not consider his English skills good enough for understanding
the text in the installation manual. Nevertheless, he felt he was capable of coping
fully well with the installation by just referring to the pictures in the documents.
The last question in the first section of the questionnaire was about the exact duties
of the interviewees, with four options to choose from. The results were as follows:
▪ 5 qualified installers (33 %)
▪ 5 installation supervisors (33 %)
▪ 5 installation planners (33 %).
28
None of the interviewees ranked as a trainee, which was the fourth option given in
the form. Those who ranked as installation planners or supervisors typically tended
to have also the practical knowledge required for this study's purposes. There was not
a single incidence in any of the interviews of a respondent not being able to tell what
would be typically going on at any phase of the installation in their projects.
For simplicity, the term installer is used as a common term to all interviewees
throughout this paper, even though this title applies literally to only one group among
them.
5.2 General usage of the manuals
The purpose of the second section of the questionnaire was to collect information on
the usage of the manuals by the users in three situations: installation planning, the
actual installation and during particular problem-solving procedures in the course of
the installation.
Of the total of 15 respondents, 12 (80 %) had used the documentation in the
installation planning phase; the three persons (20 %) who had not used it had a
ranking of qualified installer. Thus, planning of the installation was not their task in
the first place. However, the real reason for two out of three of these respondents for
not using the documentation may still have been in their preferred working practises,
since it turned out that even when doing the installation on site, they had relied on the
manuals only when they encountered particular problems.
Of the 15 respondents, 12 (80 %) had used the manuals in the field throughout the
installation, while 14 (93 %) of them had referred to the documentation when they
had checked on finer details or encountered particularly problematic situations.
When we look at the individual respondents' usage of the various manuals across the
whole installation procedure, including planning, overall mounting of the equipment
and problem-solving, a few different usage profiles emerge:
• 11 respondents (73 %) had primarily viewed the still images, but referred to
the written text when they encountered difficulties or wanted to check on
29
details, especially at the planning stage or when solving problems during the
installation. Typically, the pictures were viewed in the quick guide manual,
but some of the users with this profile had viewed them in the installation
manual (which has the same pictures plus some extras) without consulting the
text in it if there was no particular need to do so.
• Three respondents (20 %) preferred still images in all situations, while never
or very seldom referring to the text sections. One of them said that this was
due to his English skills, which he considered poor. As for the other two, their
preference for pictures was revealed by the fact that they relied on the quick
guide manual throughout the entire installation.
• One respondent (7 %) named the installation manual as the main document
and the quick guide as a supplementary aid used when encountering
difficulties. Since the quick guide is a condensed version of the installation
manual, my assumption is that when in need of additional information, this
respondent just checked that the quick guide did not happen to have different
or extra information, to be on the safe side. He actually mentioned one
incident when the quick guide had had information which was not available
in the more comprehensive installation manual. There is no clear indication
of whether he preferred text or pictures as the source of information.
These results emphasize the importance of the presentation using still images.
Fourteen respondents (93 %) had used them as the primary source. Three
interviewees (20 % of total) within this group even seemed to be able to cope without
written instructions. The responses of one interviewee (7 %) did not give clear
indication of whether he preferred text of pictures; what is known is that he used
both.
The installation video had been seen by three interviewees (20 %), but none of them
had used it in the actual installation. One of them gave a specific reason for not
having used it: he thought that it was not realistic enough and did not present the
work flow properly. So for him, the issue seemed to be the way the video was made,
30
not the format in itself. The 12 interviewees (80 %) who had not seen the video said
that they had simply not known it existed.
However, all 15 interviewees thought that the video would be useful for some
purposes. Five of them (33 %) thought they probably would have used it in the
installation of the equipment (unpacking of the equipment, erection of the frames of
the cabinets and identification of components were unprompted suggestions for use
cases). Two of them (13 %) also thought that it would be good for the initial training
of the installers. The latter opinion was shared by 10 other respondents (67 %) of
those who did not consider the video useful when doing an installation in the field.
So all in all, 12 installers (80 %) considered the video good for training purposes.
Possible use cases for training were the intial stages of learning the procedure
(suggested by seven respondents, or 47 % of them) and training on new components
introduced in new hardware releases (suggested by five respondents, or 33 %). In
both use cases, the video would help especially in giving and idea of what the
components look like.
5.3 Usage of the manuals in specific installation cases
To get more precise information on how well the different forms of documentation
can help to identify crucial details – the various attributes of movement and shape of
objects - questions were made to the interviewees on four specific installation
phases:
▪ Installation of the external power supply cables
▪ Installation of the equipment shelves inside the cabinet
▪ Installation of the cabinet's internal cables
▪ Installation of a specific support frame to aid the installation of the equipment shelves.
An identical set of questions was made to the installers concerning each of the four
phases. The interviewees were asked about:
31
• The parts of the documentation referred to at the phase in question. The aim
was to find out, which pieces of information in the manuals were considered
the most important or useful by the installers, and in which format they
preferred to have the information.
• Any problems encountered by the interviewees during the installation. The
purpose of this question was to learn the difficult tasks in the installation
phase, as they were assumed to be the ones in which documentation played
the most important role for the installers. Hence, they would have been the
steps in the procedure where most, hopefully all, installers would have
referred to the manuals.
• The solutions they had applied to those problems. The role that the
documentation may have had in helping to come up with the solutions was of
particular interest here.
• Ideas to improve the documentation for the phase in question. The purpose
here was to learn especially about those aspects of the improvements to the
user experience, which had to do with the formats of the documentation.
• Any additional comments they may have wanted to make.
In this section of the interview, many respondents also provided feedback on the
equipment itself. From these comments, only information which has relevance to the
topic of this paper – the usability of the documentation – have been included here.
Since the video had not been used by any of the installers when doing installations in
the field, there is no need to consider it in this section; we can concentrate on the
installation manual and the quick guide.
When I got around to collecting and analyzing the responses of the interviews, I
noticed that the initial approach adopted for the interviews in this section had not
worked as well as I had hoped. The interviewees had failed to name properly the
exact parts of the documentation they had referred to at each phase of the installation.
32
Without this information, comparison between the various formats of documentation
was not possible to do in sufficient detail.
One reason for our failure to get the data, in retrospect, may have been that the
questions about the documents and their parts used were the first questions in each of
the sections addressing a specific installation phase. It was only after those questions
when the interviewees were asked about the problematic steps they had encountered.
Had the order of the questions been reversed, we might – just might – have been able
to get more relevant information from the installers: after first having refreshed their
memories about the steps they had performed, they might have remembered better
how they had exactly used the manuals.
But luckily, the answers of the respondents had given us an idea of the very tasks
which posed problems that required the installers to refer to the documentation. This
in itself was valuable information for my further attempts to find out about the details
of the parts of documentation they had referred to.
The presentation of information in the manuals posed another problem. We had
expected that we would be able to tell the preference of each installer from their
choice of manual to refer to: users of the quick guide were expected to prefer pictures
and users of the comprehensive installation manuals. But in the three first phases
looked into in more detail, the problematic steps named by the installers happened to
be ones in which the manuals deviated from the practise of featuring just pictures in
the quick guide and both pictures and text in the installation manual. Thus, the
answers of the interviewees did not provide any binding clues to their preferences.
Since getting sufficiently detailed information was, nevertheless, crucial for the
verification of the study's key hypotheses, four additional questions were sent to the
interviewees via e-mail. The initial round of interviews had provided me with
information on the exact tasks where the installers had needed the manuals, so I now
had an idea of which questions exactly to ask them. The additional questions and the
answers to them are described in more detail in the appropriate sections below.
When I received the answers to those additional questions and examined them, I
noticed that at the corresponding sections in the manuals, the deviations from the
customary practises of presenting information were typically in line with the
33
preferences of the installers. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that the authors of the
manuals had already received feedback on those sections and taken it into account
when making updates. The authors' own experience and intuition may also have been
reflected in their choice of formats. Either way, this meant that the way the
information was presented in the manuals could be used as additional proof, against
which to verify the hypotheses.
5.3.1 Installation of the external power supply cables
The first installation phase examined in more detail was the installation of the
external power supply cables. They connect the cabinet to the power equipment
which feeds all equipment in the premises. They need to be purchased separately for
each installation, as the requirements for them tend to vary, depending on the
conditions on the installation site. At this phase, the crucial information to be
provided by the documents was to show direction and changes in it (routing of the
cables) and, to a lesser extent, to show one detail among several similar ones
(connections of the cables).
The only problem to do with the documentation in this section, brought up by three
of the interviewees (20 %), was routing of the power cables in premises which have
all the cabling run under the floors (“raised-floor installations”). In this kind of a
situation, the cables have to be run through the cabinet, from the bottom up, to the
power distribution units at the top of it. The routing of the cables has to be done in
such a way that they cause minimum interference to the equipment and other cables
in the cabinet. Space constraints also have to be dealt with. The manuals need to be
able to show a tested-and-tried way to route the cables.
The three installers solved the problem by referring to the cable routing picture
shown in both the quick guide and the installation manual. Likewise, they used
pictures for checking the cable connections. However, a sample of three installers
seemed certainly to be too small for the purposes of this study. In addition, a closer
look at the instructions in the manuals revealed another problem: even the
comprehensive installation manual had the routing instructions only in the form of a
picture; it featured no written description of this topic. Thus, referring to the pictures
34
was really the only option the installers had had, a finding which left me with little
idea of their real preferences.
In the additional questions sent to the interviewees later via e-mail, they were asked
directly about their preferences for cable routing instructions: was it enough to have
just pictures in the installation manual, or would they rather have had written
instructions, too? All 15 installers sent back their replies to these questions (or gave
them on the phone), with 14 persons (93 %) saying that a picture alone was
sufficient. Text was felt to be necessary by the very small minority of just one person
(7 %). From the perspective of usability, the omission of the text in this part of the
manual does not seem to pose any problem. The users can be expected to find the
information they need, as their reported practice is generally to look at the pictures in
the manual first, and then look at the text only if they want to learn additional
details.
When it comes to the reason why a description in the form of text had been omitted,
without having been missed by the installers at all, we can get a clue if we try and
imagine what the text would have looked like. It would have described the points to
bring the cables into the cabinet and named many parts of the cabinet they would
bypass, in order to give the installers suitable reference points for doing the routing
correctly. The description would have run quite long, and it would have taken some
time to read. Even then, figuring out the routing would have remained difficult as the
reader would first have had to identify the parts in the text serving as reference points
for the routing, and then figure out the path for the cables between these reference
points. I assume that these are the reasons why a picture, which can give an overall
idea almost in an instant, provided so much higher usability to the installers in this
context that a text description.
Another question concerning the cabling in the additional questionnaire was if the
installers preferred information on the connections of the cables in the form of a
picture or a table (though this information was more important regarding the
cabinet's internal cabling discussed later in this paper). The answer received from 10
respondents out of 15 (67 %) was that they wanted to have both formats; three
interviewees (20 %) preferred having just a table, and two (13 %) thought a picture
alone was better. Two persons mentioned explicitly their reason for preferring a
35
table: it is easier to count the connections using it, said one of them, while another
respondent stated that a table is more precise than a picture. Picture format, on the
other hand, was probably considered good for getting an overall view of the
installation. It would probably be adequate for an experienced installer to refresh his
memory when doing a routine he already knows.
So having both a table and a picture to show the connections was preferred by a clear
majority of the respondents. Contrary to the section on internal cabling (discussed
later in this manual), the quick guide did not feature such a table in the section
describing this installation phase. This may be because the number of power
connections is so little (only six cables) that a picture alone could give the users an
idea of any details they needed to know. However, adding a table to the quick guide
could be considered as an improvement by the author(s) of the manual.
5.3.2 Installation of the equipment shelves
The second phase studied in more detail was the installation of the equipment
shelves. These constructions are cartridges which house the computing units of the
network element. The computing units come in the form of hardware plug-in units,
or blades, installed into the shelves already at the factory. Each shelf is heavy, but
also fragile at the same time, due to the electronics it houses.
At this phase, the manuals needed to show the installers that they were required to
use a lot of physical power to get the equipment in its place, while at the same time
handling it gently. Indeed, when asked about problems encountered at this phase, 13
installers (87 %) out of the total of 15 brought up the weight to be dealt with. It had
come to them as a surprise in their first installation, and they had applied a variety of
solutions to cope with it:
• Three of them (20 %) had just lifted the shelf together with one or more
colleagues and pushed it to its place
36
• One installer (7 %) had removed the blades and other equipment from the
shelf, then mounted it, and finally fitted it again with its content (another
respondent had used the same approach in his earlier installations)
• Nine of the installers (60 %) had acquired a hydraulic lifting device to move
the shelf with, which reportedly made the installation considerably easier.
The first solution – having several persons to lift the shelf with all its contents in
place – is the one given in the manuals, though implicitly: both the quick guide and
the comprehensive installation manual feature a written caution text on the weight of
the shelf, which states explicitly that lifting it requires two persons.
In the initial round of the interviews, the interviewees had failed to give information
on how they had exactly used the manuals at this phase. Nevertheless, their responses
had indicated that it was the weight of the shelves, not their fragility, which had
proven problematic in this phase. When I looked into the installation manual and the
quick guide, the way the information was expressed in the both of them turned out to
be revealing: even the quick guide, which typically features information only in the
form of figures, had the caution concerning the weight of the shelf only in written
text; the weight was expressed in no way in any of the pictures (though they did
show the blades in their places in the shelf at the time of its installation, as a small
detail).
Let us assume that the weight had come as a surprise to most of the installers. When
getting ready for the installation, they probably had (according to the findings of this
study so far) just looked at the the pictures in the manuals. Since the pictures had not
given them any indication of any potential issues, there was no reason to check for
further details, and the caution text went probably unnoticed for them. Thus, they
ought to have realized the weight of the shelf only when handling it for the first time
– that is, if they had not gotten the information from some other source.
With that in mind, I asked the installers in the additional questionnaire about the
situation and moment when they had first learned that the shelves are heavy, and
about the exact source of the information. Only two respondents (13 %) said that
37
they had learned about the weight in a manual. Six of them (40 %) had come to
realize it when handling the shelf. Four (27 %) had read about the weight on site
from the information provided as a part of the delivery: the packing list, delivery box
or HW specification. Three (20 %) had been notified by an employee of NSN.
So, crucially, only two installers out of 15 (13 %) had noticed the text in the manual.
For the clear majority (82 %), it had probably gone unnoticed, because the
corresponding picture had not indicated in any way that the weight might be an issue
and thus alert them to check for further details in the text. The learning here is
interesting: with the kind of structure that the ATCA platform documentation has,
crucial information should be always embedded in a picture (or at least a prompting
to check further details in the text). Otherwise, it may not be noticed by the users at
all!
Let us still consider for a while the possible reasons why no information on the
weight of the shelves had been included in the pictures. The caution text is
grammatically interesting: it is not written in the imperative mood typical of
installation manuals, but in indicative. It is not asking the installer to do a task, but
telling him or her how a task should be done. It says, word-for-word:
“CAUTION! Risk of physical injury. The shelf is heavy. Lifting a shelf requires at least two persons.”
Installation manuals are usually written in such a way that they directly tell the
installers to perform certain actions. Hence the use of the imperative mood: it
expresses the attitude of the author in the role s/he has, as a person giving
instructions to the users. But when it comes to pictures, they seem to be capable of
showing the viewers just an action taking place – they do not seem to be any inherent
means to express the author's attitude towards the action in shown; they have no
counterpart to the mood of a written text. Instead, the attitude of the author seems to
be just presupposed by the viewers of the picture, based on the convention of what is
the customary way of dealing with such information in a manual. The viewer just
knows that the drawing is really part of instructions given to him or her. If the
38
caution had been expressed in the form of a drawing, some kind of an indication
would have been needed in it to show that it is meant to be viewed with a different
presupposition than all the other pictures around it. The ATCA platform manuals do
not seem to have any fixed convention of dealing with situations like this. It is
probably one reason why the author(s) of the manuals had used a written expression
alone.
After some consideration, one can find ways to express in pictures nuances like the
like the change of the mood. In our example, the series of pictures in the document
could, for example, feature an additional drawing of a person lifting the shelf alone,
with a red X over it as a sign to indicate what should not be done; and beside it there
could be a picture with two or more persons lifting a shelf together, with a green V in
the top corner to indicate the right way of doing the task. Solutions like this can
probably give the desired message sufficiently well, when implemented in a
consistent manner through the whole document library.
However, finding a suitable way to illustrate the information is only a part of the
problem in this case. As was mentioned before, international standards give strict
rules for displaying information meant to alert the users of manuals to risks. Like
legislation, the standards seem to imply that text is used as the primary means of
communication. Thus, one could assume that the author's choice of using textual
information at this occasion in a manual, which primarily comprises figures, has
been what has looked like a safe bet to solve two separate problems.
5.3.3 Installation of the cabinet's internal cables
Next, a closer look was taken at the installation of the cabinet's internal cables.
These include certain cables which carry information between the equipment in the
cabinet, as well as the cabinet's internal power supply cables. The latter ones supply
power from the cabinet's main power units (at the top) to the blades in the equipment
shelves. All internal cables are delivered with the cabinet.
Here again, the crucial information to be provided by the documents was showing
direction and changes in it (routing of the cables) and, now in a more important role,
39
showing one detail among several similar ones (the connectors the cables connect
to).
At this phase, the limited space available within the cabinets for the cabling turned
out to be the main problem for the installers. In the first round of questions, two of
them (13 %) said that they had to refer to the cable routing instructions in the
manuals when installing the cables. For routing instructions, both installers preferred
information in the form of pictures. But again, responses from just a couple of
installers were not enough to allow drawing any conclusions. Also, as with the power
cables discussed before, neither the comprehensive installation manual or the quick
guide did not have written instructions for the routing of the cables, so the installers
had not even had any choice. Thus, the answers provided by the additional
questionnaire (also discussed before) came in handy, as they showed that the clear
majority of 14 users out of 15 (93 %) did not even miss having the written
instructions at all. Thus, the information on the internal cabling was presented both in
the installation manual and the quick quide in a way which was in line with the
preferences of the users – possibly thanks to feedback received before by the authors.
The other task in which the installers simply had to refer to the manuals was
identifying the right connectors when connecting the cables to them. Again, the
manuals proved problematic in terms of drawing conclusions of the preferences of
the installers. The quick guide manual, which was expected to feature only a picture
showing the connections, had also a table with the same information in it, just like
the comprehensive installation manual did; nothing could be said about the
preferences of the installers based on just the document they had chosen to use.
So here was another reason to ask the installers – in the additional questionnaire - if
they preferred to get the information on the connections of the cables from a table or
picture. As for the answers, the results cited in the section on the power cables earlier
on in this paper are also applicable here: 10 respondents out of 15 (67 %) wanted to
have both formats; three (20 %) preferred having just a table, and two (13 %) thought
a picture was better. Having both a picture and a table was the option that would
clearly serve most of the installers best.
40
5.3.4 Installation of a support frame to facilitate the installation of the cable
shelves
The last phase of the installation procedure studied in more detail was the mounting
of a temporary support frame to facilitate the installation of the equipment shelves.
The support frame is in itself a removable shelf with a light construction, to be
mounted on the front side of the cabinet for the duration of the installation of a single
equipment shelf. Its purpose is to serve as a surface to support the heavy shelf at the
point when the installers have lifted the shelf at a right height, and have to move their
hands from the lifting position to one which allows them to push the shelf inside the
cabinet to its proper place.
In the interviews it turned out, however, that the use of lifting devices had made the
use of this part unnecessary for the most of the installers. Only two of the
interviewees (13 %) had used the part. They both had first been puzzled about how to
use the pins and springs delivered with the part for attaching it to the frame of the
cabinet. Both managed to figure this out, one by playing around with the part and its
accessories for a moment, the other by checking the installation picture in the
manual.
But all in all, due to the limited number of installers familiar with this phase of the
installation, the findings from it were too limited to be taken into account in the
results of the study. They were neither no longer crucial for verifying the key
hypotheses, so no further questions were asked on this phase in the second
questionnaire sent via e-mail.
5.3.5 Instructions on sensitive pieces of equipment
As the last question in the interview, the interviewers were asked if any parts had
been broken ever in the course of installation. The purpose of the question was to
find out if the documentation had had any weaknesses in the instructions on the
handling of fragile components, which might have led the installers to being careless
with the equipment and causing damage to it. None of the respondents reported any
such problems in current shipments.
41
However, in the early shipments of the products, certain switch in one of the blades
in the equipment shelves had sometimes been damaged if the package had been tilted
at a wrong angle when the equipment was in it. This problem, to do with the
packaging rather than the equipment, was brought up by seven respondents (47 %).
However, it had no longer been encountered by anyone in more recent shipments,
which had a redesigned package. One interviewee (7 %) had also encountered a
situation in which a key to the door of a cabinet had been broken, because it had been
erroneously left in the lock for the duration of the shipment.
It is probably in the installers' interest not to mention about such incidents, or to put
the blame on problems in the packaging of the equipment when a piece of equipment
is broken. Nevertheless, with no incidents of equipment having been damaged
reported by the installers, it seems to be safe to assume that the documentation had
been successful in warning the installers about the sensitivity of some of the
components.
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6 Assessment of the key hypotheses
With the study results available in compiled form, we can review the key hypotheses
against them and see how well they were in line with the experiences of the
interviewees in the study.
6.1 Hypothesis 1: still images make it easy to identify objects and their
movement
The first hypothesis in this study featured a comparison between written text and still
images. The latter format was thought to be better at giving an idea of what objects
look like, or how they should be moved:
“Compared with written word, still images are superior in helping to identify three-dimensional objects and in depicting the direction of their movement. A mere glance at a page of an illustrated document can give the user equally much information as many lines of text in written instructions do, and provide this information more reliably.”
The interviewees' answers to the general questions on their personal practises using
the documentation showed that still pictures were clearly the primary source of
information for 14 out of 15 interviewees (93 %). For one installer, it was impossible
to say anything about his preferences. For them, text had a only complementary role,
or no role at all. The installers typically referred to written instructions only when
they wanted to find out about specific details concerning certain tasks.
Further proof for the installers' preference to use pictures was provided by their
preferences for having the cable routing instructions only in the form of picture, as
just one respondent out of 15 (7 %) felt he needed a text description on the topic.
Since both descriptions of many parts of the equipment cabinet and the direction of
the cables play an important part in the routing instructions, the evidence speaks
strongly for the validity of the hypothesis.
43
Yet additional proof was also provided by the answers to the section which describes
the installation of the equipment shelves. They showed that only two installers out of
15 (13 %) had noticed the written caution on the weight of the shelf in either one of
the manuals. The assumed reason for this was that the information was not included
in the corresponding picture at all. Since the users were likely to first look at the
pictures and only then check for details in the text if needed, the caution had simply
gone unnoticed by them.
To the installers, the selection of format is probably a question of finding the most
comfortable way of doing the work, but questions of efficiency, accuracy and time
available to do the job are likely to play an important part as well. One of the
installers also commented this specifically in one of the fields for unprompted
comments, saying:
“The installers working on telecom operators' sites do not often have time to read large chunks of documentation or text in general. For their purposes, the quick guide is the right size and has the right format of information as it primarily comprises the still pictures.”
In conclusion, the study result fully support the first hypothesis.
6.2 Hypothesis 2: text can depict details more accurately than images
The second hypothesis made a claim in favour of textual descriptions and said that at
least certain details can be checked more reliably and easily from written text:
“Written text can provide accuracy that may be difficult to achieve in instructions based on images. This would apply to a situation in which one part or detail in a piece of equipment has to be identified amongst a group of many identical parts or details, for example when connecting cables in a hub that has many similar connectors. If a co-ordinate system has been applied to the hub, a written table probably serves the user much better in this kind of a situation than even a detailed picture of the hub could.”
As was mentioned earlier, as many as 11 installers out of 15 (73%) had regularly
used written descriptions as complementary material to still pictures, and referred to
44
it for details and additional information. Thus, their general practices were in line
with the hypothesis above.
In the interviews, the installers were asked, if they preferred looking up the
connections of cables from a table or a picture. But rather than using one format,
most of them (10 out of 15, or 67 %) wanted to have both formats. Among the
remaining five respondents, there was a slight preference for tables: three (20 %) in
favour of tables against two (13 %) of pictures. Also, a couple of unprompted
comments from the interviewees emphasized the perceived exactness of the table
compared with a picture. But no clear preference of format could be noticed among
them. Interestingly, the results concerning this individual installation phase, which
was also used as an example in the hypothesis above, did not support the hypothesis
itself!
However, all in all, the second hypothesis were quite strongly supported by the
interview results.
6.3 Hypothesis 3: text says clearly how to move an object
In the third hypothesis, it was claimed that in instructions for moving objects, at least
some of the details are better described by means of text than illustrations:
“Written text is very useful in describing variation in movement or the power that needs to be applied to an the object when moving it. One or two words (for example, asking the user to move an object “gently” or to push it “with force”) can quickly provide the user with the relevant information, which would require using additional symbols in case a picture was used in the same situation. Even if additional symbols are used in a picture, they may easily turn out to be ambiguous to the user, because they add a symbolical layer to a presentation which otherwise depicts a situation in a strictly realistic manner.”
In the case of this hypothesis, the answers from the interviewees did not provide the
kind of data which would have helped in assessing its validity; not even in the second
round of questioning. This was because, first of all, the information provided by the
interviews was quite limited. And second, in the relevant sections of the manuals, the
information was presented in a way which left no choice for the installer. The key
45
example in the manuals was the section on the installation of the equipment shelves,
in which only a caution text was indicating the need for the use of physical power,
due to the heaviness of the shelf. The same information was not available in any one
of the corresponding pictures.
However, the fact that text was chosen by the producers of the manuals as the
primary (and only) means of expression here gives quite strong support to the
hypothesis. One could think that the information on the weight was left out of the
picture because expressing it would have required an additional layer of information
to be added: whether in the form of text of figurative elements. So for this
hypothesis, the proof that comes from the actual practice adopted by the author(s) of
the manuals looks quite strong.
All in all, the study results give slight support to the third hypothesis of the study.
6.4 Hypothesis 4: video provides highest overall accuracy
The fourth and last hypothesis brought video to the forefront, with a claim that in
terms of the accuracy of expression, video is superior to text and at least at par with
still images:
“Video footage in itself has an accuracy much higher than written text (except when identifying one detail among many similar ones) and equally high as still pictures. However, video runs in real time, which can make finding the information on an individual action as a part of a procedure very slow. Also, quick referencing between two separate sections placed apart in the same video can be laborious.”
The biggest surprise to us among the findings of the study was that the installer had
found so little use for the video. Only three interviewees (20 %) had seen it; none of
them had used it either in installation planning or on site. Most of the interviewees
(80 %) did not even know about its existence. One could argue that if the video had
been considered more helpful by those installers who had seen it, awareness of its
availability would have been considerably higher, too. When those 12 installers who
had not seen the video were asked, hypothetically, if they had used it had they known
it exists, only five of them (33 %) thought that it would be a useful aid in actual
46
installations on site; a clear minority, in other words. However, as many as 12
respondents (60 %) thought it would be helpful in the initial learning of the
installation procedure, when the equipment is new to the installer.
One could suggest that it is the accuracy that video is considered to have in depicting
objects, which makes especially useful in training. One might also argue that as
media viewed in real time, video is simply too clumsy to be used on real installation
sites, especially for quick referencing. Both arguments would support the hypothesis
above.
A fact is, however, that the interviews did not provide any evidence either against or
in favour of the fourth hypothesis. They only revealed that there did not seem to be
any overwhelming demand for video content among the installers.
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7 Summary
To put the results of the study in a condensed form, still pictures were clearly the
form of documentation preferred by the installers. When it came to passages which
depicted actions in a context that is rich with details, it even looked like figures made
the sole form of communication that could provide an acceptable user experience;
descriptions in the form of text had simply been omitted from the source material of
this study in such situations, possibly because they would have ended up being just
too complicated and wordy to be understood easily. However, the power that pictures
have as a form of expression also puts pressure on authors to be careful when
planning the content of illustrated manuals: when pictures are used as a primary
means of communication, it is important to include any relevant information within
the pictures; otherwise it may not be noticed by the users at all.
Written descriptions, though seen as weaker in terms of usability in general, have
their strengths, too. This study indicated that text certainly seems to be superior
compared with pictures in communicating details like the weight of an object or
power needed to move it. Text (possibly in the form of a table) also may be a more
accurate means to describe an object, which has many similar or even identical parts
or details, although this cannot be said for certain. But in general, text was used by
the interviewees of this study quite consistently to double-check or learn the finer
details of an action or object first viewed in a picture.
As for video, this study did not provide any real information on its usability. It may
have potential to be a useful aid for the installers when they are at the initial learning
phase of the installation.
7.1 Topics for further research
Given the relatively small sample of interviewees in this study, it might be
interesting to get to compare its results with other similar studies and learn about any
48
similarities or differences in the findings. Additional research along the same lines
would also open up possibilities to make qualitative comparisons between different
document libraries, for example, from the perspective of approaches used in
organizing the information and presenting it in terms of style. The focus of such
research could also be put on defining the characteristics of a good manual based on
data gathered from real users (the topic was discussed also in this paper, but without
any foundation on practical evidence).
While this study was concentrating on installers using documentation in their
everyday work, it would also be enlightening to see results from a similar study,
which would be focusing on professionals at the initial stage of learning the
installation. It is probably at the elementary stages when they need the manuals the
most, and can give feedback on them based on fresh experience. Since video was
seen by the respondents of this study as a potentially helpful aid especially at the
learning phase, such research might also provide new insight to its usability –
especially if the study were made on users young enough to represent the generation
who has grown up watching online videos in services like YouTube.
And without a doubt, the differences in the expressive qualities of written word and
still images could be studied in more depth as such, in other contexts. One individual
finding in this study was that pictures seem to lack inherent means to express the
mood in a similar way as text can. Many comparable differences are bound to exist
between the two media. Indeed, the very foundation of the two forms of
communication seems to be different. Pictures can imitate the reality and speak in a
universal language, which does not necessarily require any learning from its users.
However, in a long tradition of western philosophy reaching back to Plato (1977; 437
B) spoken and written languages have (at least in part) been seen as arbitrary in
origin, based on agreements between individuals. The words of spoken and written
languages need to be learned one by one by users, who still may find their meanings
ambiguous. Or, like one of the interviewees of this study put it:
“ People describe things differently and call things by different names.”
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