Re: Who is my audience?

[JGREY <JGREY -at- MADE2MANAGE -dot- COM>]

Hello anonymous,

Here are my immediate reactions to your challenge.

Because your audience is flung far and wide, I think you need online
documentation.  This does not preclude paper documentation, but if you
can do only one or the other, I'd pick online.  I'd need to know more
about your situation before I could recommend between built-in Help and
WWW-based doc.

Organize your documentation by user role.  Write the kind of doc each
user role needs.   The programmers and tech staff will probably best use
reference material that lets them build their own "cognitive maps" of
the system.

The registrarial staff, faculty, secretaries, and upper-level management
will probably best use task-based (how-to) doc.  You'll have to do a
task analysis of the system to find out what tasks each user role
performs.  Such doc becomes a learning tool for your users -- you might
even be able to use the task-based doc in your classroom training.  If
you do that, by the way, your users will be a captive audience of your
doc, will see its usefulness, and will continue using it when they
return to their work.

Peace,
jim


> ----------
You wrote:
> >Up until now, I have madly documented every single feature of our
> Student
> >Information System. <snip>
> >I have three questions:
> >1. At the moment, there are 9 manuals, and many, many e-mail updates
> to
> >them. There is no on-line help, or web-based help. I have the choice
> of
> >either re-doing the paper documentation, creating application help
> >(accessible from the Help drop menu inside a module), or creating web
> >help (in a secure web site). Which type of documentation would you
> >consider to be a priority?
> >2. My 4000 users are a very diverse group of people. They include
> >programmers, tech staff, registrarial staff, faculty, secretaries,
> and
> >upper level management. I know that there are computer whizzes out
> there,
> >but there are also staff who still use rolodexes to track their
> students.
> >A fair number of staff are not comfortable with computers.
> >The main lesson that I have learned from this listserv is "know thy
> >reader". I know them, but I don't know who to write for. Would you
> write
> >for the rolodex users? The programmers? The secretaries (who only
> look at
> >information)? The registrarial staff (who change all types of
> >information)?
> >I'm only allowed to create one set of documentation. The last set was
> >written for the registrarial staff. Needless to say, the larger body
> of
> >secretaries complained about all of the useless information. The
> >non-computer users didn't read the manuals since I didn't tell them
> how
> >to turn their computers on. Management liked the manuals, but
> couldn't
> >understand why they were never used and why errors were still being
> made
> >by all staff.
>
>
jim grey \ Manager, Documentation
Made2Manage Systems, Inc. \ jgrey -at- made2manage -dot- com

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