It's a light switch

Although the point of Global Nerdy's post about The Lightswitch That Might Explain a Lot About Java is not instructional design, it's a fun example of documentation gone wrong. Although I'm a big fan of contextual help, and a sticker on a light switch is certainly "embedded documentation," the text seems overly-complex and not task-orientated. Additionally, as a reading of the comments will show, many of the functions being described are typical and discoverable. Surely this is an example of documentation that nobody wants to read.

Posted: October 19, 2007 link to this item, Tweet this item, respond to this item