The importance of product manuals
We tend to forget about the importance of product manuals and often take them for granted. But without them we would very often be completely lost! The multilingual manuals that we receive when we buy any product that needs instruction or assembly are so so important. Could you imagine receiving something brand new with absolutely no technical documentation on how to use the product or put it together? It’s the kind of thing that you would maybe even complain about if you didn’t receive it with your product.
Myself and my family have all at some point picked up some kind of product that needed a manual. The kind of product that we would have no idea what we were doing if it wasn’t for the product manual. Items such as flat packed furniture or a product that looked way too confusing to work out all by ourselves. Electrical items and kids toys that come with so many pieces you need an engineering degree just to figure it out!
My experiences with product manuals
Now I have a drawer full of the product manuals that we keep ready for a time when I need them again. I remember when we first used our brand new microwave oven, we had never owned one before. My nan had actually recommended it and bought it for our birthday (I know right how exciting!). Without the manual though I would never have figured it out.. well maybe I would have after a lot of hours trying!
I also remember when I got my desk delivered, a flat pack desk with a million different parts. I bought it for my office with every intention of building it all by myself.. like the head strong female that I am! I then realised that even if I could build it by myself I was not remotely strong enough to hold everything together and I would 4 arms to hold things in place while I fixed everything together. I roped my other half in to help put it up with me and we actually had fun putting it together. I never thought I would put having fun and flat pack in the same sentence but I just did. I’ve heard that if you can build flat pack together without arguing then the relationship will go far. I have no idea how true that is though? Without that manual between us maybe it would have been a different story though, I guess we will never really know!
I still use product manuals from things we got years and years ago (I keep them all in my ‘manual drawer’). When I want to use a new setting on the bread maker that I bought 10 years ago that is still going strong. It has so many fancy settings that I still haven’t used them all! The hoover that we bought recently came with a very small but useful manual that also went in the drawer.
The is a collaborative post.
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