12/27/2018 Are Old-School Instruction Booklets Necessary Anymore?

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/are­old­school­instruction­booklets­necessary­anymore­11545156786

GEAR & GADGETS

Are Old-School Instruction Booklets
Necessary Anymore?
Faced with a new product, some of us thrive when forced to rely on iPads for guidance. Others lounder
without traditional text

By Matthew Kronsberg
(http://wsj.com)
Dec. 18, 2018 1 13 p.m. ET
(http://www.wsj.com/pro)
(https://twitter.com/share?
url=https%3A%2F%2Fgraphics.wsj.com%2Fph
(http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php? Yes
poll%2F%3Fslug%3Dinstructions%26&text=Vot
s=100&u=https%3A%2F%2Fgraphics.wsj. INSTRUCTIONS ARE NOT what—or where—they
School%20Instruction%20Booklets%20Necess
poll%2F%3Fslug%3Dinstructions%26)
used to be, and better product design deserves
much of the credit. In 2013, Elon Musk summed
Vote: Are Old- up the new ethos succinctly when he said, “any

School product that needs an owner’s manual to work is

broken,” but you can trace the tendency for
Instruction manufacturers to withhold printed instruction
booklets back to the first iPhone, which came with
Booklets nothing resembling a traditional owner’s manual.

Necessary I recently tested out a countertop-sized Brava

Anymore? smart oven. This expensive, paradigm-shifting

device can cook three items next to each other at
once, each at a different temperature. But I found
little practical documentation in the box beyond a
few pictograms telling me to plug it in, download
an app and see Brava’s site for a quick start guide.
“I think most people want to jump in and do it to learn,” said Brava CEO and co-founder John
Pleasants.

DO I NEED THE MANUAL? / DEVICES THAT CALL FOR VARYING DEGREES OF HOMEWORK

From left: Jura S8 Espresso Machine, $2,900, shopjura.com; Dyson Airwrap, from $500,
dyson.com; Brava Smart Oven,from $995, brava.com

And indeed Brava’s control-panel touch screen gives you step-by-step instructions for every
aspect of operation. The trend is spreading across the product spectrum. Buy a Hyundai
Genesis, and you’ll be invited to download a “Virtual Guide” app: If you point your phone’s
camera at any button in the car, the app tells you what it does—no more digging through the
glovebox for a book that demystifies that button with a hieroglyph of a wizard’s hat. Unbox the
Dyson Airwrap hair styler, and the first thing you see is a card with a QR code that links to a 30-
second instructional video and a three-step infographic for those too impatient for even that.

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12/27/2018 Are Old-School Instruction Booklets Necessary Anymore? - WSJ
Most printed manuals can only encompass a limited amount of instruction. When the drum of
my washing machine abruptly declined to spin, I naturally dug its manual from the blue file box
where I’d stored it with dozens of others. When none of the booklet’s troubleshooting scenarios
matched up with my crisis, the internet came to the rescue. YouTube and sites like Fixya.com
have become essential companions to (and sometimes replacements for) many manuals.

Each year, Improbable Research, a science-humor magazine, awards an “igNobel” prize for
literature to “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then think.” This year’s winner
was an academic paper titled “Life Is Too Short to RTFM [“Read the F---ing Manual”]: How
Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products.” Ultimately it
advocates for simpler products, arguing that people tend to use only features they can figure
out themselves. In short, if it can’t fit into a quick start guide, it shouldn’t be built into your
device.

No
IF YOU’VE EVER been condemned to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture, you know a paper
manual can do things a screen can’t. It can survive a full 17-hour bunk-bed build without a
recharge. It doesn’t go to sleep while you’ve got both hands full aligning the brackets on your
Billy bookcase, and it can be hurled across the room in a fit of frustration without shattering
into a million pieces.

Though Jura, the Swiss maker of finely tuned coffee and espresso makers, offers online manuals
and even live video support, it still includes fastidiously indexed instruction booklets with its
machines. “There’s still a segment of the population that prefers a physical booklet,” said David
Shull, senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Even Mr. Pleasants of the relentlessly digital Brava indulged a last-minute desire to include a
book that customers could hold after opening the Smart Oven box, less a dry instruction
manual and more of a lush guide to the Brava lifestyle—something, as he put it, “I would want
to keep next to my cookbooks.” He admitted thinking: “We’re being too digital.” Thus came the
spiral bound Brava Book intended to inspire instead of “getting into the minutiae of, you know,
how it works or how to plug it in.”

There is, of course, value in that minutiae. The manual for the Jura S8 advises you to keep the
machine on when you empty the coffee grounds—the only way to ensure the internal grounds
counter gets reset. A good manual, in other words, explains not just how to do something, but
why.

True, those printed instructions often read like a litany of lawyer- and government-mandated
warnings (“Do not incinerate. Do not submerge in water. If seal is broken, take shelter
immediately!”) but sometimes informative poetry lurks among the pedantry. In early
November, a viral tweet from Australian author Claire Varley pictured an onomatopoeia-
packed page from the manual of a new refrigerator, informing her that, “When you hear
‘Deureureuk,’ ‘Dulkuk’ or ‘Woong’ sound” or “When you hear ’Kureureuk’ sound of water
flowing,” those “occurrences are normal.” She was, she said, “delightedly scandalised” by the
manual because, “The rulebook had been thrown out. This is the ‘In Cold Blood’ of technical
writing!”

So the next time you open a box that contains an instruction booklet, take a minute to peruse it.
Even Elon Musk seems to have had a change of heart. On the deck of one of the seagoing barges
upon which SpaceX rockets land is painted some advice: “Just Read the Instructions.”

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12/27/2018 Are Old-School Instruction Booklets Necessary Anymore? - WSJ
This copy is for your personal, non­commercial use only. To order presentation­ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit
https://www.djreprints.com.

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