How Does This

By John Greenwald

No matter what happens, do not look at the manual

You press the button, we do the rest." That marvelously simple slogan helped sell millions of Eastman Kodak cameras starting in 1888. Today, however, the owner of a new video cassette recorder or some other electronic wonder must turn to an instruction manual to get his machine working. But that is often when the trouble begins: the consumer opens a booklet to find a compilation of jargon, gibberish and just plain confusion. "There is a major disease in this country called wall-stare," says Sanford Rosen, president of Communication Sciences, a Minneapolis consulting firm. "When people read a computer manual, they just want to put it down and stare at the wall for as long as possible."

Bad instructions are bad business as well as a torture to read. A maddening manual can cripple sales of products that might have been successful. Coleco lost $35 million in the fourth quarter last year partly because people flocked to return the initial version of its Adam computer, which the company offered for $600. In a statement to shareholders, Coleco blamed much of the consumer dissatisfaction on "manuals which did not offer the first-time user adequate assistance." Observes Joseph Sugarman, president of J S & A, a mail-order house that specializes in high-tech merchandise: "Very often, items with the highest rate of return are those where customers are frustrated with the instructions." Coleco has reintroduced the Adam computer, complete with a new instruction manual.

Directions for hooking up and operating video cassette recorders can be particularly maddening. A frequent mystery is how to connect the machines to television sets and antennas. Owners must often pick their way through mazes of diagrams and technical terms like "One-touch type F connector" that seem to have been written for licensed electricians. Some manuals compound the confusion with illustrations that differ from the actual machine. Notes the 46-page booklet for a Panasonic OmniVision model: "Please be assured that this difference is not due to mistake but to ongoing product improvement."

Manuals for smaller, less expensive items can also be frustrating. Instructions for a Pulsar digital quartz watch ($59) go on for 13 pages before telling how to set the time. One Hewlett-Packard financial calculator ($110) comes with an operating booklet that runs to 246 pages of small type. The company supplements that with a 170-page training guide that sells for $15. "People have said we should do something like this for all our manuals," observes Janet Cryer, who wrote the guide.

Consumer electronics companies insist that customers are generally satisfied with the directions they get. "Over the past year the number of complaints we have received because of difficulties understanding our user's manuals would probably fit in one hand," says W.T. Collins, a vice president for consumer affairs at RCA. The firm's instructions used to be written by design engineers, but now they are prepared by technical personnel who train distributors in how to operate and service RCA products. Says Collins: "We realized that engineers have a tendency to make the content of a manual a bit too technical."

Various causes are behind impenetrable operating booklets. Some publications are slapped together quickly just as the product is about to be introduced. "Manuals are too often the last things that are done," says Communication Sciences' Rosen. The pressure is particularly intense in the fast-moving personal-computer industry. "A lot of the problem in that market is the haste to get the product out first," says Lois Schwartz, a New York City specialist in the preparation of instructions.

Some gadgetry from Japan and its Asian neighbors helps swell the confusion. Says Bob Budnek, a former Atlanta audio consultant: "The instructions are written in Japan, translated in Japan and printed in Japan, and sometimes the intention of making it clear to people in English does not come through." For example, the directions for one Japanese-made turntable cartridge advise, "Furthermore, cantilever would be damaged when the stylus guard is touched and detouched." Even simple points about simple products can get lost in translation. The instructions for Swimotor, a Hong Kong-made toy that pulls children through water, warn that "the user must every time pay attention especially to the time used with this machine."

A clear manual can be a thing of beauty and a joy forever. "Those that are well thought out make good reading," says Catalogue Merchant Joseph Sugarman. "They sound as if they were written by a teacher with plenty of patience who is aware of all the mistakes a consumer can make."

Many retailers are impressed with the manual for Apple's new Macintosh computer. Designed to be used with tapes and video displays, it guides Macintosh owners gently through a technological thicket. Says Chris Espinosa, 22, an eight-year Apple veteran who supervised the booklet's preparation: "A good manual is not a narrative; it is an outline or report. Nobody ever reads a manual cover to cover--only mutants do that."

Fortunately, better manuals may be on the way. Leading technical schools like Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, N.Y., and Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon have writing programs that teach students how to translate complex facts into clear directions. Enrollment in the classes is high, and instructors say that corporations have been snapping up their graduates.

But for now, at least, many consumers are likely to continue to find operating booklets more frustrating than enlightening. Indeed, some may feel like twisting the famous bromide "If all else fails, consult the manual" into a new admonition: "No matter what happens, do not look at the manual!''

--By John Greenwald.

Reported by Dorothy Ferenbaugh/New York and Carol Fletcher/Chicago

With reporting by Dorothy Ferenbaugh, Carol Fletcher