Designing without manual,
A couple of weeks back, I was talking to my cousin who is a doctor in US who happily declared that she had finally bought a iPhone. My cousin is very intelligent and a great doctor but she is not one who can be called tech savy and would be a perfect example of a late adapter. She was very happpy about the ease of use of the iPhone and wished it had USER MANUAL. The first thing that astounded me, was the discovery that there were people who actually read a manual :-) Most of my device user manuals are stored in unopened packets for a couple of years till my wife throws it out. The second thing that came to my mind was the manuals are needed for products which are extremely complicated to use (like the VCR or the universal remote control). My design philosophy has been that if you need to develop a manual, you have not designed it right. A good product is one in which the configuration is simple and well laid out. I have always found it maddening when the configuraion is not in pl...