My life as a new condo owner is currently filled with moving details and arrangements: cable installation, lock replacement, and minor upgrades and fixes resulting from our home inspection. One detail that caught me off guard and required some research was the selection, purchase, and installation of a new garbage disposal.
Let’s face it: garbage disposals are not one of those things that an average person thinks about. Unless your unit is on the wane—or as in our case, dead—you’re unlikely to wake up one morning and say “I think I’ll shop for a new garbage disposal today.” You probably won’t find yourself habitually gravitating toward the disposal display in Sears, either.
But for the past few days, I have been preoccupied with garbage disposals. My browser has been choked with an array of tabs, each displaying search results and home improvement sites. I have been reading specs, making comparisons, and learning the jargon. I learned to pay attention to specific attributes: continuous feed, sound insulation, grind chamber capacity… induction motor vs. permanent magnet motor…
One model even comes with a “self-service wrenchette … for easy clearing of jams.” My word processor doesn’t recognize wrenchette. I suppose that’s a sort of faux French word for “little wrench.”
Another model makes your life easier because
two grind stages let you quickly grind difficult food waste you wouldn’t put in a standard disposer, like celery and potato peels.
I hate when food waste is “difficult.”
Learning through research
Like most people, I start with the Web when I’m trying to tackle a new knowledge domain. Through research, I was able to narrow down my choice of product and find out where I could purchase it.
Conducting Web research reminded me that I cannot search the Web without informally evaluating the usability of sites. None of the sites that I found explained the meaning of the disposal product specs. The meaning of some terms was obvious, and I could infer the meaning of other terms such as grind capacity. But terms such as sink baffle kind of… well… baffled me. I went on a wild word chase: baffle as noun = “something that balks, checks, or deflects.”
OK, I realize that these sites simply want to sell products, but a good customer is an educated customer, right? A little embedded help can’t hurt.
Learning from experts
My research also reminded me of the discovery process that we technical communicators constantly employ whenever we start a new project. I thought of all the domain knowledge that I have acquired over the years.
At one point I oversaw a large-scale training project at the World Bank. The Bank was rolling out an ERP system, and I was responsible for developing training for the procurement module. I had never worked in procurement, and I spent many hours attending meetings—even on Saturday mornings—with procurement experts.
At the National Cancer Institute, I took on medical terminology thesaurus management. I dove deeply into papers and books on Description Logics and Knowledge Representation. I worked closely with information scientists. I developed a fascination with Tim Berners-Lee’s idea of a truly semantic Web.
Over the years, I have become immersed in many other domains, including telecom engineering, clinical care, accounting, mortgage products, law office management, and manufacturing plant flow simulation. The key to acquiring domain knowledge is to work closely with subject matter experts, or SMEs (pronounced “smeez”).
In one of my most successful projects at the United States Mint, my SME was a seasoned accounting professional. Our task was to produce a training course for the customized accounting module of another ERP system. We worked under a seemingly impossible deadline, using a collaborative strategy where my SME developed raw content for conceptual detail and exercises, and I provided additional writing, editing, organization, and overall design. We met the deadline, and our course was well received.
Projects where software developers were the appointed SMEs did not always proceed as smoothly. In most cases, software developers are in the same position as information developers. Like us, they have to acquire the domain knowledge and expertise to truly understand the needs of the users.
Users are the real SMEs. They use the products and follow the processes every day. Spend time with them. Observe them. Listen to them. Learn from them.
What’s your story?
What on-the-job knowledge have you acquired over the years? Which domains were especially challenging? I hope that you will share your stories.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
OK, but you have to finish the story!! What did you end up buying? And why? (This is gonna be MY domain knowledge, in case MY garbage disposal decides to quit disposing! )
OK, you asked for it. I checked out Lowes, Sears, and Home Depot.
Lowe’s and Sears had comparable prices, but the Sears Kenmore 1 hp model was slightly less expensive than the 3/4 hp Insinkerator at Lowe’s. The Kenmore also comes with a 9-year warranty as opposed to a 5-year warranty for the Insinkerator. Granted, Sears charges $20 more than Lowe’s for installation (a fee for taking away the old disposal unit) but because the Kenmore unit has more horsepower and a better warranty, I thought the price difference ($320 vs. $340) was negligible.
Home Depot’s product prices were comparable to Lowe’s, but their installation charges were outrageous. They charged: $120 for installation + $40 to take away the old unit plus + $65 to install a unit in a high-rise building. We’ll be living in an 18th floor penthouse unit, so we definitely would get socked with the ridiculous overcharge. The unit and installation would cost $425.
So there you have it. I hope you’ll visit Products R Us again.
Products R Us rocks! I never shop Home Depot. Something about the way they treat single females there (at least here). And I’m still boycotting Sears. Something about trying to get a danged refrigerator delivered last year while recovering from surgery (and how many times it took ‘em to get it right when I was supposed to be resting!). But the warranty differential might be enuf to sway me to their side for a small appliance.
I’m so glad you did this awesome research Eddie. I’m so gonna steal it! Well, steal the information when I need to do the replacement thing. I also need to replace dishwasher, oven/stove, and microwave. Wanna do the research for me for those other items?
Glad to oblige. Now, for those other items… At least wait until I move!
Eddie,
You will never know how much I wish I lived nearby! When our disposer died, I thought nothing of going to the store, purchasing a new one, bringing it home and installing it. If I had bee in the neighborhood, I would have gladly done the same you you.
Here’s hoping the move went (or is going) well. Please give Greg a hug from both of us!
Welcome to home ownership!!!!!
Thanks, Jay! We’re finally moved in, but we have more boxes than furniture.
When I was documenting geophysical modeling applications for the petroleum industry, I had to figure out what was “common knowledge” among “ordinary” geophysicists, as opposed to the novel approaches and algorithms that the cutting-edge experts on the project had developed. One strategy I used was to look up concepts in a college geophysics textbook; if it was in there, then “Joe Geophysicist” either knew it, or ought to know it, and I didn’t need to explain it.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Janet. I went through a similar process when writing for NCI terminology editors. The editors had varying levels of experience. We included a chapter on how OWL is being used at the NCI, but for more general information, we referred readers to the many outstanding ground-level OWL tutorials that are available on the web.