TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Agreed. Or to go further, maybe the user is like the casual user of the GIMP, who has a notion what he wants to accomplish, in terms of the image he's creating or modifying, but is searching for tools or menu items that look like they might be a place to start.
A person who had had instruction in the use of GIMP or PhotoShop, seeing me do what I occasionally do with images, would utter (at the very least) a horrified gasp, and would equate my blundering in that tool with somebody doing local/spot/inline formatting instead of using styles in Word. "Pah! You might as well use Paint... you Philistine!" Well yeah, but it doesn't have curve controls for color and such. "But the way you are stomping around, it's only an accident that you ever get anything remotely like what you seek." True, but it's quicker than taking a course every year to do one or two images, and then forgetting for 11 months.
In other words, maybe the user hasn't even started, and would like to figure out where/how to start that won't paint them into a corner three steps from now.
Illustrator is a bit more straightforward, in some ways, to the beginner or the constant-start-over-er, but that's an illusion due to lack of knowledge. Should I mask something first? Create layers? Does it matter if I skew/shear before I rotate, or after? Do I need to set/define anchors before I start, or can I just fudge them when I get through several transformations and realize I need finer control of just this corner right here....? And .... Hey!.... where's the History table that I had in PS? :-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Lauriston
Sent: August-07-14 1:42 PM
To: TechWR-L
Subject: Re: Task-based versus UI-based documentation
Best case, UI-based documentation is confusing because instructions on accomplishing any task that uses multiple parts of the UI is scattered around so the user has to figure a lot out for themselves.
Worst case, it's just a narrative of the UI that adds no value. I've thrown out a lot of docs like that and rewritten them from scratch.
"For context sensitive, UI based - you hit help on a screen and you want to know what THAT screen does and what the different fields are."
It's not nearly that simple.
1. You don't know how the user got to the topic. Maybe they pressed F1, maybe they searched the help, maybe they clicked a link in another topic, maybe they're browsing the TOC, if the help is on the web maybe they got there from Google.
2. Maybe the user knows how to use the thing and is just looking for the menu sequence to get to it.
3. Maybe the user is doing something that uses more than one part of the UI and is trying to figure out where to go next to accomplish the rest of the task.
The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Read about how Georgia System Operation Corporation improved teamwork, communication, and efficiency using Doc-To-Help | http://bit.ly/1lRPd2l
