Hi,
Watching this TED talk on creativity and boredom, I started thinking about this quote mentioned at about 9 minute into the talk:
The only people who refer to their customers as ‘users’ are drug dealers and technology companies.
A quick glance reveals how big industry players refer to their customers here and here, and also, the evolution of smaller emerging players with regards to naming conventions between v1 and v2 of their product.
Interestingly enough this topic received a thoughtful attention, and believe speaks to the core identify of Mudita as a company, and also resonates with the community Mudita is trying to nourish.
More on the subject of technical writing the NYT article says:
User .
When you’re writing about computers, there’s almost never a sentence where you couldn’t substitute “you” or, worst case, “the customer” as the noun and thereby improve the sentence. Instead of saying, “The user can, at his or her option, elect to remove this functionality,” say, “You can turn this feature off.” It’s not only clearer, but it gets you out of the awkward “his or her” bit.
A quick count of the word ‘User’ in instruction manuals reveal: N0kia 2720 – 49 times Mudita Pure – 45 times Apli phne – 27 times MP-01 – 11 times MP-02 – 12 times
Device . You know what’s weird? Cellphone companies never actually use the term “cellphone.” They always use the word “device,” as in the wince-inducing sentence, “The user can transfer D.R.M.-protected content to their device.”
Mentioning of the word ‘Device’’ in instruction manuals: Apli phne – 209 times N0kia 2720 – 103 times Mudita Pure – 74 times MP-01 – 65 times MP-02 – 47 times
Content . As in, “Web content.” Ugh. If you mean “Web pages,” say “Web pages.” If you mean “music,” say “music.” Nobody outside the tech industry says “content” when they mean “what’s on your player” or “what’s on your Web site.”
Mentioning of the word ‘Content’ (‘table of contents’ not counted) in manuals: Apli phne – 59 times N0kia 2720 – 17 times MP-02 – 12 times MP-01 – 10 times Mudita Pure - 0
EDIT:
Looking forward to go through the ONBOARDING PROCESS as instructed on page 7 of the manual when I take my brand new DEVICE out of box (Mudita pure phone?) when it arrives in the mail.
