Who’s afraid of the big bad help?
Despite having used Inkscape for years, I learned a lot more about it while writing a guide to vector graphics. Why? Among other things, I finally read the Inkscape manual. After all, why read when you can jump in and draw, discovering the features in the process?
In turns out that typical users—people using software to do their job—rely on a similar strategy. In 1987, John Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson described what they called “the paradox of the active user”—the fact that, due to being focused on the end-product and unwilling to waste time, people avoided the very documentation that would have helped them be more productive in the long run.
Instead of reading the manual, users tried to apply their previous knowledge, used trial and error, and sometimes asked others for help.
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