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Okay, so where do we tech writing help authors go to get up to speed
on this new ... paradigm?
Actually, I'm worried. Anyone use the Word 2003 online help. It blows.
Or sucks. Takes forever to load, you can't find anything ... there are
some interesting nuggets in the article referenced by this thread.
>The Table of Contents is great for reference type Help, but usability
tests show that it's not used in user assistance.
I don't use it but I do know people who do.
> By examining the web stats, they found that only 70% of the pages were never read. They removed all these pages and never received a single complaint.
If you have ever searched high and low on the MS KB, perhaps you will
agree with me that maybe, just maybe, those pages were never found.
And then they removed them? Nice. I do read online help. I do look for
information. Take MS Word, I look to use Sequence fields, I look to
use macros, but I bet 95% of Word users never do those things, much
less look in the help for them ... should that user assistance
therefore be removed?
>Shane McRoberts [MS Help Team] outlined the following steps for
writing assistance for applications (taken with 2003 PDC slides).
>Identify user goals and tasks
>Consider adding assistance directly into the UI
>Document/implement tasks
>Call API to invoke task (show help pane)
>Surface search in your user interface (see Note below)
>Distribute Help with your application
I get a chuckle learning that the usability assistance guru is
*invoking* tasks. I try to sprinkle Harry Potter wizarding terms
liberally throughout my docs, too, I find my readers get more
usability assistance from them. <g>
>The goal of the UI designer is to put the Help author out of a job
Previously, it was the goal of the programmer to do that. And it's the
goal of the technical writer to put the tech support dood out of a
job. And it's the goal of PDF, HTML, and the World Wide Web to put
paper out of a job. Yeah right. <g>
Point taken, though. While I clearly doubt Microsoft's ability to pull
this off, I am curious and interested to see them try and learn about
what they did, how they did it, and what worked.
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