In this section we'll use the word "training" to include both classroom instruction and tutorials, on-line or otherwise, that users can do on their own. Many of the ideas about training for computer systems were developed before personal computers were widely available, when users had to be trained in the most basic computer concepts and activities. Today most users have experience with many kinds of computers, including PC's, games, telephone interfaces, automated teller machines, and so forth. Designing training for these users is both easier and harder than working from the ground up. It's easier because less training is needed, especially if you've borrowed key interface techniques from programs the user already knows. But it's harder because you have to decide what topics the training should cover, if any.

Once again, the task-centered design process should have already provided an answer to the question of what the training should cover. It should cover your representative tasks, just like the manual. In fact, the manual described in this chapter should be an effective training device for users who want to work through it. It provides exactly the information that's needed, and it's organized around the appropriate tasks. The manual also provides an appropriate fallback for users who want to explore the system without guidance.

However, users differ widely in their approaches to learning a new system. Some users, and some managers, prefer a classroom training situation, or at least a section of the documentation that is specifically designed as a tutorial, not just part of the reference manual. If you decide to support the needs of those users, the tasks described in the manual still make a good starting point. Unlike the manual, however, the training package needs to be structured in a way that will force the user to become actively involved in working with the system.

A "minimal manual" version of your basic manual can serve as an effective centerpiece for a training program. The minimal manual, an idea suggested and tested by John Carroll at IBM, goes a step beyond the brevity we recommend for the basic manual. The minimal manual is intentionally incomplete. It couples a carefully crafted lack of details with clear task goals, forcing the user to investigate the on-line interface to discover how it works. (J.M. Carroll. "The Nurnberg Funnel: Designing Minimalist Instruction for Practical Computer Skill." Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.)

Several studies by Carroll and other researchers have shown that the minimalist approach yields dramatically shorter learning times than traditional, fully guided training. The approach is also supported by several things that psychology has discovered about human learning (see HyperTopic). Some authors even recommend that the only manual supplied with a system should be a minimal manual. We think that view underestimates the value of a more complete manual for long- term reference, but we do recommend minimal training documents. And we echo the minimalist call for the briefest possible presentations of information, in training, manuals, and throughout the external interface.

HyperTopic: Some Psychological Facts About Learning

Experimental psychologists have been studying learning and memory objectively for over a hundred years. They still can't tell you how to transfer knowledge from one person to another with the ease of copying files onto a new disk, but they have discovered some things that help predict what kinds of training will help the user learn things faster and remember them better.

In this section we describe some of the more powerful learning effects that have been discovered. You should, however, take this information with a grain of salt -- maybe even with a whole saltshaker. All of these effects have been repeatedly validated in laboratory experiments, but learning in the real world involves a complex mixture of influences, many of which aren't well understood because they are too hard to study in the laboratory.

So, use these facts as ideas to help you improve your training program, but keep in mind that they are only a small part of a much larger story.

People learn facts best if they have to work with them. There are lots of ways to make learners "work with" what they're learning. You can describe two procedures, then let them decide which is correct for a given situation. You can ask them to figure out on their own what the system does (this is called "discovery" learning). You can ask them to think about how the procedures they are learning would apply to their own work. You can teach them facts briefly, then later ask them to recall what they've learned. The important thing is to do something more than simply presenting the step-by-step procedures and expecting those to be memorized.
Skills improve with practice. Like a lot of psychological discoveries, this seems obvious. But it may not be obvious how broadly applicable it is. Essentially any skill, from typing to memorizing numbers to skiing to solving math problems, can be made faster and more accurate with the right kind of practice.
Practice requires feedback to be effective. The practice that is most effective for learning is practice in which learners are encouraged to try things and then given immediate feedback as to whether they've done the right thing or not. This kind of practice, incidentally, is a lot of work for the learner.
Spaced practice is more effective. Practicing the same simple exercise over and over (for example, saving a file) isn't as effective as doing the exercise once, then doing several other things, then doing the original exercise again. In a training program, a set of skills should be introduced, then the instruction should go on to other things. Later, the learner should be put in a situation where the first set of skills have to be recalled and used again.
Things that shouldn't be learned should be varied. If you present a series of exercises involving files named File-A, File-B, File-C, File-D, and File-E, then the users may go away thinking that all files have to be named "File" plus a letter. (This is something we've actually seen happen, before basic computer knowledge was more widespread.) More subtly, if your system has several screens available but the training exercises all happen to be done while one screen is showing, then users will be more likely to remember what they've learned when that screen is visible in the future -- even if they realize that the same facts apply to the other screens.
People can only work on learning a few things at a time. This factor most often becomes a problem when the learning environment itself requires more attention than the material that should be learned. An on-screen tutorial that requires the user to learn several keystrokes to navigate through it is one bad example. Another is a tutorial that frequently requires the user to find and load special files from floppy disks.
People can't run (or dance) before they walk. This is as much common sense as psychology, but it interacts with the previous item about learning only a few things at a time. If learners don't have a good grasp of basic skills, such as file loading, keyboard and mouse usage, menu selection, and using the "undo" menu, then they won't be able to concentrate on learning more sophisticated skills. An effective way to teach computer skills, where possible, is to teach basic skills one day and send users back to their office for a week of practice. Then bring them back for a day of advanced training. (What's "basic" and "advanced" depends on the user and the system, of course.)