Re: Writing User Guide and Help for Wireless Application Portal

Subject: Re: Writing User Guide and Help for Wireless Application Portal
From: Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
To: Saradha Krishnamurty <saradha -dot- krishnamurty -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:45:57 -0800

Saradha Krishnamurty wrote:

to write to a wap portal.

If you're writing on the subject of a wap portal, let your audience be your guide in the way you develop the material. Do you know what I mean? Some audiences will only think of a wap portal as a black box that performs certain useful things. Others will approach it as a wap portal setup and configuration task. Still others will perceive it as a network node with special config and security problems not exclusively addressed by the wap portal setup and configuration tasks. So, given these different audiences, it will help to think of each of these audiences as 'roles' that have their own informational needs and responsibilities. You're going to write the script for each role.

Since I don't know anything about your portal or the roles in this case, allow me to go out on a limb--I speculate that you're going to have the same take that I would--you will create one manual covering all of the roles. Write a separate manual section for each role. A different writer might decide to mush all the roles together in one section, with conditional instructions where needed, but you and I would write separate sections for each role.
Outlining is always a good place to start. If you have your screen captures already, fine, but illustration is not really an Outline task, is it? Of course it isn't. I use a text note to self to mark the topics that will need illustrations/tables/screenshots. ... Also, add a text note for each procedure that you think you're going to write up. Many of them are predictable, even at tthe Outline phase, eh?
So now your outline is getting nicely populated with roles, procedures, and illustrations. It took you a couple of minutes to do this, and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, right? :-)



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References:
RE: Writing User Guide and Help for Wireless Application Portal: From: Lauren
Re: Writing User Guide and Help for Wireless Application Portal: From: Saradha Krishnamurty

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