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Chapter 9: User Documentation and Online Help by Cheah Jia Ni - Coggle…
Chapter 9: User Documentation and Online Help
by Cheah Jia Ni
Paper user manuals
The form of paper user manuals are install manual, brief getting-started notes, introductory tutorial, thorough tutorial, detailed reference material, quick reference card and conversation manual. One of the example is the reference cards for safety that provided in the flight.
There are some studies stated that it will become slower when you read the online helps compared to paper documentation.
Domain for help system
Syntactic : describe the interface objects and actions
Semantic : Sequence of actions to complete task
Pragmatic : domain-specific knowledge
Guidelines for create the user manual
Have discover tour for novice users to explore before using the system.
Show examples on how to accomplish the task. For example, animated demonstration on how to pay online.
Prevent mistakes if possible. For example, whenever user make an actions that may caused problems, ask for confirmation
The writing style such as font type and colour combinations used in the user manual must be simple and clean so that it's not look cluttered.
Use a friendly phrases or words in user manual. For instance, just state the actions on how to do the task. No condemns
Collect as much as possible on the data of what might need by from user. Thus, we can have a complete user manual and user can find the documentation anytime from our documentation.
Make help message complete and accurate. For example, there will be a help hyperlink when user face some errors on install the software.
Make the help sections easy to access by user. It shouldn't hide somewhere else, it should be visible on the main screen or near the error message.
Online user manual
There are some user documentation in online, such as online manual, online help, context-sensitive help, animated demonstration, FAQs and online communities.
There are some disadvantages when using online manual, which are the screen will block the word and it's not effective when you want to watch the tutorial online and make actions on another window, the screen for mobile phone may not effective to read the online manual
Reasons of having an insufficient and incomplete reference material are because it is developed by the junior member of the development team.
Online manual :
For example, a paper manuals that can view online. Yet, the page layouts may not convert well. So, the effectiveness may be vary depends on the size of the display screen.
Enhanced by special features such as electronic bookmarks, table and figures available, multiple indices and table of content. Table of content may be useful for novice and knowledge intermittent users as they can easily find the documentation they want.
3.For online manuals can use the features of online such as added colour, sound, animation and text highlighting, multiple windows, et al. will be more effective
Online help:
Online help example: when we facing an error on installing a software. There will be a help section on telling us what to do in order to install successful.
Can include an answer wizard that can respond in natural language.
For example, windows help and support that can find the documentation using search options. For example, when u cannot access something on the windows, use the search engine of windows help, to find more documentation about accessibility
Context-sensitive help:
It can sense the task that user would like to do and provide the help through the message.
It can be a small pop-up box so that it not obstruct the screen of user
Both user and system will be active participants, where system assume the actions of user and user can make action like cancel the help provided or click on the help link that the system provided in a small pop up
Online tutorials
Example of online tutorial such as w3school that able for students to try themselves with the source code and output beside.
Helps to practice the skills in an individual space without the scared feeling of making mistakes
Animated demonstration:
Animated demonstration such as the demo on how to pay the money online. It can be a type of video on displaying the phone screen the steps-by-steps to accomplish the task
A game demonstration will have 30 seconds on telling user or give the novice users a discover tour on how to play the games
Include animations, graphics, sound, colour.
Online communities:
FAQs for new users
For example, help desk or help center that can check with help assistant so that we can get the help directly on real-time
User may expose themselves on lack of knowledge for accomplish some task to the help assistance when communicate with them.
Conclusion
Ask professional when writing the documentation
Have feedback sections at user help section so that we can improve based on the feedback given
Prepare as earlier as possible for the user documentation, which is before implementation
Have field-test early so that you can investigate that any documentation for help is missing out.
Able to make changes and updates regularly based on your system. For example, if there are some features changed in your system after updated, the documentation need to update as well.
Time for user documentation and online help
Before starting with quick guide, quick tour. (Very effective for newcomers)
At the beginning of the interaction with animated demonstration, to demonstrate to user how to accomplish the task step-by-step
During the task provides context-sensitive help or system-initiated help
After failure with help buttons or FAQs along the error message
When the user return next times can provide the start-up tips so that it can prevent user make the same error again