MINIMALIST COMPUTER DOCUMENTATION - Universiteit Twente

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
application programs are always meant to be used in some task domain (e.g.,
accounting, clerical work, statistics), and adult novices often have
considerable knowledge and skills in these domains. In that respect, they bring
a variety of experience to the training scene. For instance, graphical designers
who want to learn a desktop publishing package are familiar with the
graphical terminology and are skilled at paging up texts, designing posters or
drawing comprehensible graphs. But, what they do not know is how to use the
computer for this purpose.
Their knowledge of the underlying task domain provides new users with
clearly outlined ideas and expectations about the training. They are not
learning for learning's sake. Rather, they are trying to use a tool, a tool they
believe will facilitate their work and activities. As a result, they are highly
motivated to achieve personal goals (Carroll, 1990; Knowles, 1984). Few (if
any) of these goals refer to learning about the program. Thus, novice users
show very little interest in getting to know and understand all the facts of a
program. Rather, they prefer to act, to do things with the program. They only
want to gain understanding of the components of the system and their
relations if it helps them achieve their goals. In short, they want to 'read to
learn to do' rather than to 'read to learn' (Redish, 1988).
The learning preferences of novice users contrast with their information
needs. This dissimilarity has become known as the paradox of sensemaking:
first-time users show a strong desire to act in order to learn, but, at the same
time, their actions, errors, and misconceptions show that they need to learn in
order to be able to act (Carroll & Rosson, 1987). This paradox implies that
designing workable training materials for novice users requires a constant
balancing between their desire to act and their need for knowledge. More
specifically, novice users' training needs can be met by presenting them only
the prerequisite knowledge to cope with the activity and allowing them to
learn more from engaging in it.
1.3 Software package
To a large extent, research on novice computer users has concentrated on
word processing (e.g., Allwood & Eliasson, 1987; Bovair, Kieras & Polson,
1990; Carroll & Carrithers, 1984; Charney & Reder, 1986; Czaja, Hammond,
Blascovich & Swede, 1986; Douglas & Moran, 1983; Foss, Smith-Kerker &
Rosson, 1987; Frese et al., 1988; Gomez, Egan & Bowers, 1986; Singley &
Anderson, 1987). The choice for this kind of software is obvious. Word
processing is a very general use of computer systems (e.g., Kalén & Allwood,
1991; Penrose & Seiford, 1988). For many people, the use of a word processor
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