Effects of Documentation Errors on User Perception of Interactive Programs: The Experimental Design
http://www.stc.org/confproceed/1994/PDFs/PG320321.PDF

Ridgway, Lenore S.
STC Proceedings
1994

Abstract:

It would be useful to determine how much effect errors in product documentation have on users, if the errors do not seriously interfere with product use. In an effort to start collecting information on this issue, we designed an experiment to explore the reactions of users to a simple interactive program with flawed documentation. We hypothesized that product quality would be judged in part by the quality of the documentation, if the errors in the documentation interfered with task performance. We also hypothesized that some but not all users would be sensitive to documentation errors and would downgrade their rating of the program and the documentation based on these errors. Our experimental design is described in this paper.