RE: In Search of a Class

[Jim Shaeffer <jims -at- spsi -dot- com>]

My thoughts:
The best way to find content that is "very useful to the users" is to
interact with the users. A lot of documentation lacks content from the
users' domain, not from the programmers' domain. 
More input from developers and trainers is good. More input from real-world
users (or prospective users) of the software will be better. 
This would lead you to search out classes on User Analysis or similar
subjects. 
Another source of input should be your marketing department. They need to
know what is important to the users in order to market the product. 

However, if the goal is to find a seminar that teaches how to read "source
code" and determine from that what content will make a user excited about
the software, good luck. 

Jim Shaeffer
jims -at- spsi -dot- com


-----Original Message-----

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.)