As a hungry user, I want to be able to eat my burger with one hand that does not become messy so that my hunger will be satisfied and i won’t have to wash my hands.
This is great. My six year old son likes to play a game called “what’s a sandwich” where we pretend the name sandwich doesn’t exist and we have to explain how it’s made then pretend the chef serves misunderstood dish. He’ll love this picture.
We grouped up to write instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then the teacher would read them literally while making a sandwich. I don’t think she ended up making any sandwiches.
I think I saw a video similar to this with a dad and son. Ended up rubbing the peanut jar on the paper or something like that because instructions weren’t specific enough.
If this “model” example wasn’t glued together for photo purposes, gravity would make these toppings an absolute shit-show before it’s ever actually served.
This is why I clarify EVERYTHING. I’m sure it gets annoying to people some times but my Brain sees every possible ambiguity usually and I need to make sure even if I’m 99% sure that it’s one way over the other.
Since the bun is already “cut” this is the only logical way to do it given the instructions. The issue isn’t misunderstanding, it’s the instructions being bad. It’s like telling someone to cut an already-sliced loaf of bread.
It is really really difficult to write good plain text instructions for other people to follow.
It’s a great experiment to try at home, or with a coworker - write up some directions for a task that the other person doesn’t already know how to do (something non-critical preferably) and ask them to try to complete the task per the directions without any other help. It is amazing how many assumptions we make about what seems obvious to us.
I get pushback at work about how I need to “be better at working with incomplete or vague instructions”, but “if it’s not in the spec the behavior is undefined, and you get what you get” is unacceptable.
Still mildly peeved about when product complained a list wasn’t sorted alphabetically. They’re lucky the order was deterministic at all
Are you not allowed to ask questions? Are the people who write the specs your team mates or are they your enemy? Of course you can play dumb, but that might result in your colleagues thinking that you are dumb.
When the Master entered the Grand Temple he asked questions about everything there. Someone said, Do not tell me that this son of a villager from Tsou is expert in matters of ritual. When he went to the Grand Temple, he had to ask about everything. The Master hearing of this said, Just so such is the ritual.
Always ask questions. Don’t be afraid of other people thinking that you’re dumb. Ask different people for the same answers. Listen to the way that they think about it.
We have set recipes but somehow everyone makes each recipe different. It’s all the same ingredients in generally the same portions yet somehow I can tell who made what just based on taste or consistency.
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