USB installation instructions for beginners

[Mat Tomaszewski]

On 01/03/2010 20:43, Phil Bull wrote:
> Hi Mat,
>
> On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 10:03 +0000, Mat Tomaszewski wrote:
>    
>> Can you explain what do you have in mind by "more confident users" and
>> why would they need a "first line" support? Is that decision based on
>> any research or just the discussion within this group (apologies if this
>> is all obvious to everyone here, I may not be up to speed)?
>>      
> "More confident users" are people who are accustomed to tinkering with
> their computer. They have a reasonable level of technical knowledge
> (e.g. they know that hard disks are "partitioned"), but won't know the
> exact steps required for the installation. A lot of Ubuntu users fall
> into this group, I believe. I hope that providing them with a brief
> outline-type guide would significantly reduce the time it takes for them
> to get Ubuntu up and running on their netbook. They require this
> documentation for reasons of convenience - they could find the
> information elsewhere, but it would be time-consuming. This would target
> what I think will be a big user group, and won't be presented as
> technically as it might sound.
>
> This isn't based on any particular research, but I think that writing
> decent intermediate-level docs will provide at least a basic level of
> coverage that we can then build around for other user groups. It will
> also be a good reference for people delivering support (many novice
> users rely on more skilled friends/relatives to perform complicated
> tasks like installation).
>    

I agree that the intermediate-level guide would be very useful. And I 
think I know exactly what kind of person you're describing. Do you know 
of any existing software guide (not necessarily FOSS) that would be a 
good reference and we could use as a benchmark?

>    
>>> Second, a less restricted guide with more hand-holding would be
>>> produced. This would include screenshots and a troubleshooting section
>>> alongside the main installation sequence. This will cater for novice
>>> users.
>>>        
>> This sounds very interesting. Are there any concrete plans outlined
>> somewhere on the wiki already?
>>      
> No, but I've spoken to another team member about it (Paul) and he seems
> keen to help out. I think that a reasonable plan would be to take the
> intermediate-level guide (see above) and flesh it out with more details
> (e.g. more explicit, finer-grained instructions) and some screenshots.
>
>    

I think it maps perfectly to what we've been thinking about. I think 
it's worth kicking it off asap - please let us know how we can help (via 
mailing list or irc). I'm also CC'ing Charline, who is our user research 
lead and is keen to find out more about the project.

Cheers,

Mat