"A good manual for a complex product should usually include at least FIVE distinct sections: Reference Guide, Tutorial, Learning/Understanding, Cookbook/Recipe, and Start Here. The single biggest problem with most bad less than stellar manuals is that they're usually only reference. But even with the best index on the planet, a reference guide suffers from one huge mother-of-an-assumption: that the user knows exactly what to look up!

A reference guide, no matte@��
�����<���y correct and concise and clear and all those other referencey goodness attributes, does virtually NOTHING to get me out of "P" mode if I don't even know what (or even that) I should be looking up."

This passage is from the essay by Kathy Sierra titled: How to get users to RTFM.

this passage was particularly interesting to me since i often find myself in this scenario:

i have some information i wish to find, a term i need to look up, a process i need to do, or a burning question. naturally, i go to the index, a place locate the information i seek. all of a sudden its like i am in a snow storm - my keywords that i thought were perfect are failing me. the information cannot be found because the index is lacking detail, specifics or there is just a lack of index. i am out of keywords, and out of patience for this guide. so i scan the material, maybe its a manual, of course that takes an hour because it is 5,284 pages long. i learn a lot of other interesting things but i never find what i am looking for and the manual has failed me. but i feel that i have failed me because i am so frustrated.

design requires mapping and usability. the design of many references fail by the standards of Kathy Sierra, Donald Norman and the user. indexes and manuals are designed just like products, they complement the product and are part of the package. manuals are an extension of customer service, it is the company's first contact with the consumer. when the manual's design fails, the product also fails because the consumer can not use it properly.