Re: In Search of a Class

[Harry Hager <hhager -at- dttus -dot- com>]

     Cindy,
     
     I don't know of any course that does this but that is not the focus of 
     my reply. 
     
     Your boss might be looking for something like the following additional 
     information in user manuals:
     - Examples or exercises that build upon each other and that form 
     common thread throughout the user manual.
     - Rationale as to why and when a user might want to do this task.
     - Rationale for entering the available values in the various data 
     entry fields. An explanation of what happens when the user enters 
     value A into a field as opposed to what happens when the user enters 
     value B and the significance of the distinction.
     - Scenarios for the various tasks (These can be the exercises but not 
     necessarily built one upon another as with the exercises.)  
     - The relative importance of the various tasks, fields, and so forth. 
     
     In otherwords, maybe he want the whys and the wherefores included and 
     not just the "Just the facts, Ma'am" information but he can't quite 
     come up with the words to say exactly what it is that he wants. 
     
     H. Jim Hager
     hhager -at- dttus -dot- com
     
     
     
     


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: In Search of a Class
Author:  chudson -at- ECS-INC -dot- com at Internet-USA
Date:    3/27/00 12:04 PM


My new boss, the Director of Development, wants us to add more content to 
user manuals. In-house we'll be taking classes and spending more time 
working with both programmers and trainers to accomplish that goal. In 
addition, he's assigned several of us to locate and attend a seminar on 
"effectively capturing software application functionality content.  This 
class should focus on how to best extract meaningful information from the 
source and translate that information into a content rich documentation 
suite that is very useful to the users." (His words here, not mine.)
     
I'm looking for ideas. Can anyone help?
     
Cindy Hudson
Enterprise Computer Systems, Inc.