Downloading User Guides Should Be Easier Than This

These days, technical products rarely ship with a full set of printed documentation. What you’ll usually find in the box is just a small, flimsy, almost-unreadable-because-the-font-is-so-tiny “Getting Started” leaflet. Want to obtain the full user guide? Download a PDF file!

This works just fine for software applications: As long as there is an internet connection, the application can directly download any digital documentation. For hardware gadgets, however, the process tends to be more complicated and error-prone.

The manual that was in the box

In the hopes of rekindling my musical talent, I replaced my simplistic MIDI keyboard with a Roland stage piano. I was pleasantly surprised to find a complete, printed owner’s manual inside the box.

Additional documents covering more advanced topics are available for download: An Effect Parameter Guide, a Sound List, and an overview of the instrument’s MIDI Implementation.

A prominent notice right on the front page of the printed manual describes the process for downloading the digital documents:

To obtain the PDF manual

  1. Enter the following URL in your computer: http://www.roland.com/manuals/
  2. Choose “RD-800” as the product name.

The front page of the printed manual that shipped with the piano. Instructions for downloading additional PDF manuals appears on its front page.

When you follow the link to http://www.roland.com/manuals/, you’ll see a page that lists three product categories.

This step feels confusing, because you have to already know the appropriate category, research it, or find it through trial and error. The “information scent” that this link trio provides just isn’t that great.

The landing page for downloading

Clicking any of the links takes you to a list of products. Even though the list is divided into four letter ranges (A–G, etc.), each of the pages is very tall, as you can gauge from the size of the scrollbar thumb in the screenshot. This makes for quite a bit of scrolling.

A product list page showing instruments from the RD stage piano product line. The window's scrollbar thumb is very short, indicating that the page is very tall and contains many list items.

The detail page for a product lists all related documents that are available for download. Before you can actually get a document onto your computer, though, Roland makes you agree to a “Software License Agreement.”

The product page for the RD-800 lists four documents for download: Owner's Manual, MIDI Implementation, Sound List, and Addendum. The latter apparently contains the effect parameter guide.

Isn’t it a bit odd that you have to agree to a software license for downloading a user guide? Worse yet, you have to do so for every document:

  1. Click a document link
  2. Check the I Agree And Wish to Proceed With Download option
  3. Click Download File
  4. See the document appear in the browser window
  5. Save the document to your computer
  6. Navigate backwards two pages
  7. Start over until you have downloaded all documents

A page displaying a lengthy legalese

Compare that process to 1.) right-clicking a document link and 2.) selecting “Save to Downloads Folder” from the context menu. If you try that on the Roland site now, what you’ll find in the downloads folder is, of course, the HTML file for the software license page.

Why make this process so hard?

What bad things could a customer possibly do by downloading manuals if they weren’t required to agreeing to the user license? How useful are these manuals if you don’t own the product they belong to? Why not make this process a little bit easier for those who have actually purchased the product whose features are described in the downloadable manuals?

Imagine if, in place of the three product category links, a real-time search field appeared on the “Owner’s Manuals” landing page: As soon as you start typing into the field, it summons a filtered list of product names. E.g., type “rd,” and you will see the list of all pianos in the RD product line.

Select your specific model from the list, and you’re taken to the respective downloads page. And on that page, the links point directly to the PDF files.

If it is really necessary to force the user to the sign the software license, let’s display the license text and an I Agree button over the downloads page. As soon as you, the user, click that button, the license disappears to make way for the download links.

In the grand scheme of things…

The hiccups of the download process won’t really impact my enjoyment of this fabulous instrument. Nevertheless, it would be nice if companies — especially major industry players like Roland — would make download processes for manuals, drivers, etc. that little bit more user-friendly.

A Delightful Way of Scheduling a Service Appointment

Window washing is one of the few home chores that my wife and I have outsourced to a services company.

To schedule an appointment with such a company, you usually call them, hope that you don’t spend too much time in the phone queue, and keep your fingers crossed that they have an open slot for you soon.

There’s a better way.

During their visit last fall, our window washer asked whether they should put us on their calendar for this spring. We agreed, and eventually forgot about it entirely. Then, this spring, the company’s owner called and left a message on my phone.

He told me that they had put us on their calendar and would show up at our house in exactly two weeks. If that appointment would work for us, there would be nothing for us to do. If we needed to move the appointment, though, I should just call him back at my convenience.

A business call that focuses on the customer’s needs

Thanks to his call, there was no need for us to remember to make that appointment. By suggesting a date and time in the voice message, we could instantly check our calendars for any conflicts. And any necessary adjustments were just one call away, because we could talk directly to the person who made it.

What’s more, had I accepted the call, we could have made any necessary adjustments right then and there.

For us, two weeks’ advance notice is usually enough to make room in our schedule. This was also the case with this appointment. Consequently, all we had to do was check our calendars and add the appointment. Done!

Two days before the appointment, I received a quick confirmation call. On the day-of, the window washing crew arrived and rounded off this great customer experience with excellent work.

A great “design” for both customer and business

This process not only works great for the customer, but also for the company:

  • Putting appointments on their calendar for the next service period ensures that customers don’t skip an appointment, thus ensuring (repeat) income for the company.

  • Taking initiative by suggesting a date and time instead of having their customers do so, likely allows the company to more tightly pack their calendar.

  • Instead of having to respond to countless incoming calls from customers, they can bundle outgoing calls into a an hour, or so, per day, making the whole process much more efficient for them.

Compared to the call center hell that we usually go through these days, it is refreshing to experience a customer-to-business communication that just works. And it works for both parties. Which begs the questio: Why is this the exception, and not the rule?

How Search Engines Implement Auto-Correct

When you search the web these days, you will notice that most search engines automatically correct “mistakes” in your search terms: If you submit a search that resembles a more common word or spelling, the sites modify it accordingly.

This is helpful if you make an actual typo, but can get in the way when searching for a more exotic word or phrase. Therefore, the search engines not only notify you of any such correction; they also allow you to choose which of the two searches you actually would like to run.

To find out how Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo implement this feature1, I searched for “ux desine,” which — not surprisingly — all of the sites changed to “ux design.”

Bing

The auto-correct notice appears below a few ads that are shown at the top of the results page. The notice is easy to spot, but it’d probably benefit from a bit more white space above and below it, so it stands out more.

The notice’s text is easy to understand: The displayed search results are based on both the original search term and the corrected one. By clicking either link in the notice, you can summon matches for only one of the two.

Browser window with Bing results page, displaying the notice 'Including results for ux design. Do you want results only for ux desine?' towards the bottom of the page. Both search terms are clickable.

But there’s a problem: For this specific search, the auto-correct notice still appears on-screen without any scrolling. If you look at the Yahoo example below, however, you can see that, at least on smaller laptop screens, ads at the top of a results page can potentially push the notice off the screen.

DuckDuckGo

In DuckDuckGo, the auto-correct notice is located at the very top of the page, so it’s easier to spot than its Bing counterpart. Its text is confusing, though.

The notice states, “Did you mean ux design?,” but the results on the page already contain that phrase. So, are the displayed results based on my original search term, or the auto-corrected one, or do they combine results for both?

Browser window with DuckDuckGo results page, displaying the notice 'Did you mean ux design?' at the top of the page. The search term is clickable.

Google

Google also displays the notice at the top of the page.

In contrast to DuckDuckGo, however, the text is unambiguous: The search is based only on the auto-corrected search term. If you would like to see results for your original term, you need to click a link in the notice.

I’m not sure why Google also makes the auto-corrected search term clickable, because, at this point, it is already displaying the results for it. Maybe its function is to place the auto-corrected text into the search field.

Browser window with Google results page, displaying the notice 'Showing results for ux design. Search instead for ux desine' at the top of the page. Both search terms are clickable.

Yahoo

Yahoo cooperates with Bing for search functionality. The auto-correct notice and its placement are similar between the two.

Unlike Bing, Yahoo’s ads push the auto-correct notice off the screen for the given search term. This makes the notice more difficult to spot compared to it being anchored to the top of the page.

Browser window with Yahoo results page, showing only ads, but no auto-correct notice at all.

The way that Yahoo marks ads exacerbates the problem: Instead of displaying a little “Ad” label next to each ad block, there’s a single line, “Ads related to ux design,” at the top of the page. When you scroll down on the page, and that line is moved off screen, it’s impossible to tell which links on the page are ads, and which are actual search results.

Note how this ad “warning” also includes the auto-corrected search term, whereas both the browser and Yahoo’s search field contain the original term. Unless you scroll down, you won’t see the explanation of why the two search terms differ, nor would you be able to tell what terms the search is based on.

Browser window with Yahoo results page, scrolled down a little bit. Now, the notice 'Including results for ux design. Search only for ux desine' is visible. Both search terms are clickable.

One web searcher’s opinion

Of these four approaches, Google’s easily is my favorite:

  • The auto-correct notification always appears at the top of the page, so I can instantly verify that the results actually match my intended search,

  • the notice’s text is unambiguous and easy to understand, and

  • I can also precisely search for either my original search term, or for the corrected version.

  1. According to Wikipedia, Bing, Google, and Yahoo! are the most popular search engines in the English-speaking world. DuckDuckGo seems to be the most popular non-user-tracking English-language search engine. That’s why I picked these four. ↩