"The inverse flow of the anti-linear advance of the pivotal device must be accurately advanced in order to facilitate the realignment of oneself with current chronology."
What was that again? Who cares anyway? You may as well be talking Russian.
Incomprehensible instructions, poor tag line creation, and sheer incompetent use of English frustrate and confuse clients.
The influx of Chinese goods into Zimbabwe has seen a number of great examples of poorly translated (often literally) English pamphlets arrive with your new purchase.
Consider these instructions from a recently obtained water dispenser.
"With freshing (sic) keeper cabinet of water dispenser can be put fruits, tea appliance. Need preservation, cleaning, rotating boards regularly switch on the preservation, preservation work at the end of the regular switch automatically return to the 0 position. At this time, the doors still closed 1-3 hours, until the cabinet automatic decomposition of ozone."
This is a real quote I promise (I can't make up something that bad)!
Needless to say my model does not possess a "freshing keeper cabinet" anyway. Perhaps they mean refrigerator and it got sent with the wrong model?
I guess I will never know. Other than that the water dispenser works fine, thank you very much.
Last week, I walked into the office of a reputable local firm to pay a bill. At 1630 hours I walked through their still open doors, was directed to a queue and spent 10 minutes waiting to be served.
Greeted by an attractive sales assistant, I stated my desire to pay. Wait, no they did not want my money as banking was done at 1630 hours even though they only closed at five.
There was no sign to indicate this, in fact no opening hours displayed anywhere. I had wasted a good 15 minutes of precious time that could have been saved by a simple notice. I wonder how many people go through the same process day after day at the same shop without anything changing.
Correct and concise communication means everything. Use clear and simple diagrams if you have to (my water dispenser has a red handle and a little logo of a cup with steam coming out it to indicate the hot water outlet).
Airports are often very good at this with their signage designed for slightly lost, first-time flyers to use. The symbols for baggage, immigration and customs are basic if not almost universal in design to aid those who may not speak the local language.
The London Underground and Hong Kong MTR rely heavily on simple diagrams to help millions of tourists navigate their cities along with the massive local population who need to get to work. Programmes like Skype have simple ‘1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .' set-up instructions to get you signed up and logged in.
When it comes to operating instructions, get the spelling, grammar and translation checked and double-checked.
Then find some ignorant and, preferably, technically challenged person and get them to follow the instructions. Or better still, invent something that is so obvious in its function that does not need instructions-merely a small diagram on the front of the packaging (think the paper-clip).
Remember that the font on the manual may need to be read by an 80-year-old with fading eyesight (drug companies could learn something here).
The best directions in the world do not work if they are unreadable. Have you ever seen an elderly person trying to read the numbers on a "Buddie" card? I appreciate that there is only so much information you can fit on a small space, but small, complex fonts are unreadable-on text cards and on your product.
While our population is skewed in the young direction the rest of the world is not. If you are marketing a product to the older portion of the consumer base please do them a favour and increase the font size a little.
Finally, bear in mind the old joke of the woman who presents to the emergency room with severe burns on her feet. In her hands she is clutching a tin of tomato soup.
On being asked what happened she explains that she was merely following the instructions on the tin. It said "Stand in boiling water for 10 minutes."
For some people there is no help.
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