Uncovering Why Users don’t Understand Manuals — And how to Improve Comprehension
- Presentation
- UX, UI Design, and Interactive Documentation
-
PhD Jonatan Lundin
- Excosoft
Contents
No matter how polished your technical documentation content strategy is—whether you’re publishing to a content delivery portal, generating content with AI, or producing traditional manuals—your work only succeeds if users understand it. Comprehension is the real measure of effectiveness: if readers can’t make sense of the information, they can’t use it, act on it, or trust it.
This presentation takes a fresh look at comprehension through the lens of cognitive psychology, exploring how users form mental models to interpret technical content. We’ll analyze real examples of unclear writing to uncover why they fail and what we can do better.
You’ll walk away with practical strategies to integrate into your information architecture and content design, ensuring that your outputs not only deliver information but actively support user thinking, decision-making, and action—across every channel and format.
Takeaways
You’ll gain practical techniques to design content that supports your users’ thinking and actions, helping ensure that your technical communication achieves its intended effect across all channels and formats.