Like most geeks do, Mac Slocum says most user manuals are worthless: they usually display poorly written text and confusing diagrams. Although I don’t have such a negative point of view, I must admit that most user manuals don’t match the same quality level as the products they are delivered with, especially products designed abroad with user manuals poorly translated…

Of course, there are many reasons why user manuals are poorly written and designed: most users don’t read them anymore.

• First, most products provide the kind of user interfaces that do not require users to spend hours reading their user manual. Phones, cameras, TVs or cars have very nice and intuitive user interfaces, that most users can understand the moment they touch it.
• Second, there is a kind of general acceptance about product user interface standards: even if hardware look different, the embedded software makes product look very similar. There is not much difference between two Android or two Windows mobile cellphone: they share the same operating system, and can share the same apps.
• Third, why should a company spend dollar in massive redactional efforts while social media and user generated content will provide most users with the level of information they require: how to activate this feature, how to get rid of that one, or how to develop a product expertise, through blogs, forums or online videos?

However, relying on users to deliver good quality educational content or user manuals can be risky for several reasons:

• It takes time for users to adopt products and deliver such content, and quality content is not the users’s main focus
• Internationalization and product variants can be a nightmare, especially for products with very different design from one country to the other: videos or blog posts related to a specific product version could lead users with a different product version to make inappropriate choices
• Highly specialized products, with long training curves, still require very complexes user manuals, with hundreds of pages and very developped indexes: who can afford such redactional efforts in today’s economy?

Augmented reality brings answers to the questions we just raised. AR videos posted to YouTube, provide very explicit and useful hints to users that want to develop their skills, fix a small problem or heck they are using teir products appropriately.

Mac Slocum on O’Reilly Radar, cites Columbia University efforts on project ARMAR (Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair). I think the following video is even more explicit:

Can you imagine the benefits you could raise from such interactive user manuals, the kind of manuals that exactly shows the product you’re using, and not another one?