December 24th, 2010

Some suggestions on improving the assembly instructions for your children's play furniture

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some suggestions for those companies which produce children’s play furniture:

  1. If a part is 99.9% symmetric, please call out the other 0.1%. Otherwise, the person doing the assembling will waste five minutes trying to get it to fit before realizing, “Oh, I have to turn it the other way.”
  2. Do not refer to the same part by multiple names. Try to stick to the name as it appears in the parts list. Otherwise, the person doing the assembling will not know which one is the M5 × 30mm screw.
  3. Corollary: If you refer to a part, please make sure it appears in the parts list.
  4. Do not omit steps on the assumption that the person doing the assembling has read ahead. “Step 5: Insert X into Y. Step 6: Close snaps around the sides of Y.” Invisible step 4.5: “Open the snaps around the sides of Y so that X will fit.”
  5. Take into account that the person doing the assembling is most likely being pestered by at least one excited kid during the assembly process. And is probably tired.
Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Non-Computer

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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