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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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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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▪ 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 %).

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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

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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,

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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:

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• 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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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• 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

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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

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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