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Subject:Re: User's guide for Web applications? From:"Christensen, Kent" <lkchris -at- sandia -dot- gov> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:11:59 -0600
Suggest establishing priorities.
First priority is to design the application so well that it is completely
intuitive and no "help" of any sort is necessary. Certainly most of your
users don't want to have to read any help. Assuming at the outset you can't
succeed at this is mostly defeatism. This means you have to test using
strangers. Pretest.
Second priority should follow from the first. "Intuitive" in this instance
means there is a "help" button right next to where the user gets stuck.
"Intuitive" in this instance means that pressing the help button takes the
user directly to something that discusses the question at hand--not a table
of contents or a manual title page for sure. (Return them right to where
they were, too.) Bottom line: online help is not an option, assuming you
don't think failure is. Note: lots of "freeware" and "shareware" comes with
online help. "Dot bomb" is evidence "less than free" is not a viable
business plan.
Third priority is to produce a full-blown manual, table of contents and all.
PDF vs something else is just noise. The fact some portion of your
customers might expect a manual or that a manual might be a legal
requirement isn't.
...
Actually, I think it really isn't "establish priorities" but rather it is
"recognize priorities." This has been done by others before. You could
read some case studies of both failures and successes. Somebody has
probably written a book. I bet it doesn't have a chapter called "Skip the
Online Help."
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