Minimalism and Documentation

Mary Ann Eiler. 'Minimalism and Documentation Downsizing: The Issues and the Debate."  The Newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Technical Communication. 39.4 (1997).

What is minimalism? Is minimalist documentation "risky," and if so, what can be done to mitgate the risk? Was the structure of Windows 95's Help based on John Carroll's Minimalist Model or was "the result" more a Microsoft business decision -- or a bit of both? These are the issues I challenged my OnLine Design class (Spring 1996) to explore and resolve as we probed John Carroll's original concept of The Minimal Manual and evolving minimalist principles and heuristics.

Realizing that Carroll's original formulation of minimalism at the IBM Watson Research Center in the 1980s as presented in his book The Nurnberg Funnel was "birthed" in the context of user problems and learning strategies, we understood early on that minimalism is a far richer concept than "less is more" and that to view it simply as a commitment to brevity or "downsized text" was a serious disservice and mistake.

What is Minimalism?

Developed by Carroll as an instructional design philosophy, the minimalist model is a response to learner "problem types." Learners, Carroll observed, often (1) tend to jump the gun, (2) avoid careful planning, (3) resist detailed systems of instructional steps, (4) are subject to learning interference from similar tasks, and (5) have difficulty recognizing, diagnosing, and recovering from their errors. For each "problem" however there is a corresponding "active learning strategy." Learners (1) learn by doing, (2) learn by thinking and reasoning, (3) desire meaningful context and goals, (4) use prior knowledge to manage and assimilate new experience, and (5) use error diagnosis and recovery episodes to explore the boundaries of what they know. These problem-types and corresponding learning strategies form the basis for Carroll's minimalist principles. These principles challenge traditional, or systems-oriented, approaches to instructional design and delivery. Unfortunaely, they have lead to the misdirected "doctrine of cut text." Carroll's minimalist principles encourage both writer and instructor to: Previews, introductions, summaries, and reviews often violate Principle 1. Similarly, while training materials should encourage Principle 2, Carroll warns that "People come to a learning task with a personal agenda of goals and concerns that can structure their use of training materials." Simply put, instead of logically analyzing what learners need to know and decomposing learning objectives into a step-by-step sequence of preview, practice, and test review, minimalist documentation design begins with general problem-types that characterize user-learner behaviors. In one of my own documentation experiences, users needed to transfer learning from a system that allowed less rigorous data entry restrictions (e.g., free text) to a highly managed one (e.g., specific fields). From a minimalist perspective, prior knowledge in such a learning environment was best channeled to help users recognize similarities within differences rather than similarities alone since a focus only on the later could (and did) increase error rate.

Is minimalism a complete documentation solution? Carroll and van der Meij respond to Farkas and Williams on this issue in Ten Misconceptions about Minimalism as they observe that one of the reasons that minimalism is not intended as a complete documentation solution "is that it is an orientation toward design that does not aspire to eventuate in a final cook-book. The relevant theory and practical experience about learning and using information that bear on the design of instruction and documentation are too vast and too diverse to be susceptible to cook-book treatment."

Minimalism and "Risk"

Ask experienced documenation specialists (as I did) and they will argue that in a high stakes environment (e.g., aviation, medicine, etc.) minimalism may pose liability concerns. Secondly, in a highly complex and integrated documentation shop where units depend on other units for the complete documentation project, there is little time for a discovery approach. Also, learning theory experts may argue that while holistic learners want the "big picture" (closer to the minimalist approach), serial learners prefer the details (closer to the systems approach). Brockman cautions that gaps may occur in a learning-by-discovery model and that Carroll's requirement of re- iterative testing often eludes designers who end up just cutting words. For Brockman, "Perhaps the most important lesson to learn from the minimalist design philosophy is that the best solution is an eclectic one." Other solutions include Farkas' layering approach that serves both novice and expert. Unlike the unlayered novel, layering is "a careful strategy for selective reading." Characteristics of minimalist online procedures include conceptualization limited to topic title, steps at high levels of generality, elimination of "special issues" -- all accompanied by "unobtrusive" layering with jumps and pop-ups. 

Minimalism and Windows 95

Was Windows 95's Help based on Carroll's minimalist model? IIT students Kathy O'Donnell and Brenda A. Garity (to whom this paper owes considerable debt) speak to the issue. O'Donnell's "snapshots" of Expert Opinions includes Gayle Picken's affirming observations: (1) single point of entry to Help; (2) topics organized by category with jumps to common tasks; (3) index with keywords for all user levels, general, and specific references; (4) tips/tricks for the advanced; and (5) shortcut buttons, context-sensitive help, troubleshooter topics, among other techniques.  O'Donnell also mentions David Farkas' discussion of a minimalist influence: (1) short, task and action oriented topics; (2) exclusion of overviews; (3) evidence of layering; and (4) re-iterative testing in the design cycle. The sceptics included Scott Boggan who felt that while the Help 95 team may have appropriated the minimalist terminology, the primary influence was the need to limit the documentation to 1MG and 100 print pages, and Cheryl Lockett-Zubart who saw a greater focus on application tasks than user needs, though recognizing the possible influence of minimalism.

Garity, evaluating the animated Getting Your Work Done segment of Windows 95 Help, concluded that it was "somewhat influenced by minimalism." Confirming Carroll's task and action oriented approaches, she reported that within the topics themselves "users must act immediately by selecting a topic in The Basics" and that the action the user must take to do the task "is described immediately, with no provision of background information or overview." Similarly, there is evidence of Carroll's reading to do, study, and locate approach. For example, modular tasks enable users to read information in any order; topics support users who like to read everything up front and users who seek information on a specific task. As for Carroll's error recognition and recovery principle, however, she reports "I did not find any example of error information."

Conclusion

As Help systems mature and minimalism evolves to address new environments the debate is likely to continue and the issues proliferate. To be continued is whether or how brevity will be based on media requirements, user needs, or both, and what role business decisions will play in "the mix."

References

1    Carroll, J.M. (1990). The Nurnberg Funnel. Designing Minimalist Instruction for Practical Computer Skill. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990.

2    Carroll, J.M. (1990). An Overview of Minimalist Instruction. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. January 2-5. pp. 210-218. Washington, D.C. The Computer Society of the IEEE.

3    Carroll, J.M. (1984). "Minimalist Training." Datamation Magazine. November. pp. 125-136.

4    Farkas, D.K. and T.R. Williams (1990). "John Carroll's The Nurnberg Funnel and Minimalist Documentation." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Vol. 33. No.4. pp. 182-187.

5    Carroll, J.M. and Hans van der Meij. "Ten Misconceptions about Minimalism". Manuscript Draft as of March 1996. p. 12. (to appear in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, June 1996).

6    Brockman, R. J. (1990). Writing Better Computer User Documentation. New York: John Wiley and Sons. pp. 93-101.

7    Farkas, D.K. (1996). "Layering as a "safety net" for minimalist documentation." Manuscript draft as of March 1996. pp.8-10.

8    O'Donnell, K. (1996). Was Microsoft's Windows 95 Help System based on John Carroll's minimalist model? Major Project. On-Line Design (530). I.I.T. May 1996. pp. 21-24.

9    Garity, B. (1996). Minimalist Influences in Windows 95 Help? Major Project. On-Line Design (530). I.I.T. May 1996. pp.1-9.

10  Picken, G. (1995). "Developing Windows 95 Help." The WinHelp Journal. 2(1). Fall, 1995. pp. 18-21. As reported in O'Donnell, May 1996.

11  O'Donnell, K. Phone interview with David Farkas (Developing Online Help for Windows 95, John Wiley & Sons). March 1996. 

12  O'Donnell, K. Phone interview with Scott Broggan (Developing Online Help for Windows 95, John Wiley & Sons). March 1996.

13   O'Donnell, K. Phone interview with Cheryl Lockett-Zubart (A Real World Look at Help Authoring). April, 1996.

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