RE: Inserting Use Cases in Online Help

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Dana Worley was heard to say:
 
> On Monday, October 06, 2008, Ronald Schwarz wrote:
> 
> > Is it an idea to insert use cases as configuration examples
following
> > a normal set of user instructions for a "generic" situation?
> >
> > What is a good argument to use against the inclusion of the use
cases?
> > It seems to me the right place to include such data is internal
> > documentation for advocating the creation of new features, in
> > marketing documentation, and sales presentations.
> 
> If the use cases subsequently tell how to solve the problem using the
> product, then I think
> they have a perfectly legitimate place in the document.

For a complex or flexible product, I think that one of the best uses of
use cases in Help (or other customer docs) is that it shows the product
in action, in a fairly complete, end-to-end fashion. It might not be
exactly what the reading customer intends to do, but it's a starting
point to get them thinking how the product might be used in their
application.

That said, I don't have a lot of use-case material. I'm always looking
for more. But even the examples that I provide for commands and
operations can be useful for somebody who has a different need than the
one for which the example was written. 

What's happened more than once is that somebody has bought our hardware
and toolkit because it had certain specific capabilities, and they had a
certain method in mind (which is why they sought a product with specific
capabilities) - but they noticed an example for some other set of
commands and options that they hadn't even considered, and decided to go
a different (more efficient or more comprehensive) direction with their
own development.

 - Kevin
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