This post from Creating Passionate Users is a couple weeks old, but really stuck with me:
Why do so many companies treat potential users so much better than existing users? Think about it. The brochure is a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom. The brochure gets the big budget while the manual gets the big index. What if we stopped making the docs we give away for free SO much nicer than the ones the user paid for? What if instead of seducing potential users to buy, we seduced existing users to learn?
The key message here? Don’t forget about your existing users. Having spent time writing the typical user documentation and manuals, I can imagine all sorts of explanations for why they’re written that way, but the comparison image here really makes you wonder.
