Tag Archives: Technical Authors

Does looking at online Help make users forget?

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Treasury at Petra, JordanOver the weekend, Dr Chris Atherton suggested I look at “the doorway effect”. You may well have experienced walking through a doorway and then finding you’d forgotten why you’d stood up in the first place.

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have discovered your brain is not to blame for your confusion about what you’re doing in a new room – the doorway itself is.

 

 

From Scientific American:

The researchers say that when you pass through a doorway, your mind compartmentalizes your actions into separate episodes. Having moved into a new episode, the brain archives the previous one, making it less available for access.

The doorway can be a virtual doorway as well as a physical doorway. The researchers’ experiments involved seating participants in front of a computer screen running a video game.

So is this effect also happening when users need to leave a screen in a software application and read Help – be it delivered as a .CHM file, on a Web site or on paper?

The solution? If we deliver User Assistance (Help) in a way that it is actually located within the application screens, not only can we minimise the need for users having to go through a virtual door, we can also embed the learning into the users’ specific situations.

More: Scientific American article

Why Technical Authors make the best Project Managers for Agile projects

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Red Gate Software’s Dominic Smith mentioned in his presentation at UAEurope conference that the company had found Technical Authors were ideally suited to take on the role of Project Manager for small Agile software development projects. In fact, Red Gate had morphed most of its Technical Authors into to a hybrid Project Manager role.

Dominic made a strong case why Technical Authors made good Agile software project managers:

  • They are focused on the user
  • They understand the user
  • They understand a lot of the technological aspects
  • They are used to delivering projects on time
  • They are more extravert and people-orientated than programmers (yes, this is broad generalisation)
  • They ensure User Assistance isn’t forgotten in the project plan, and that it is considered from the very start
  • They can provide a business focus to the project, and are able to kill projects that don’t make business sense any more.

Do you agree?

Disclosure: Red Gate is a client of ours.

How software users become champions

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Matthew Syed is a British sports journalist and former three times Commonwealth Games gold medallist, who has been investigating what is needed to make people excellent at doing any task involving complexity.

He argues that natural talent, your genes, are far less important than many people think. What’s important is practising what you can’t quite do. He argues we grow if we test our limitations, because our body adapts.

So what on earth does that have to do with developing software and Technical Authors? Syed argues there are two opposing views regarding success:

  1. One “school” believes talent is what makes success. This means that if you fail, you believe it’s because you don’t have enough talent. Therefore, you’re likely to give up.
  2. The other “school” believes success is all about practice – the quantity of practice, the quality of teaching and the willingness to test our limitations. This means that if you fail, you believe you can succeed with more perseverance and effort. It’s an opportunity to adapt and grow.

I would argue the whole philosophy of User Assistance is based around the belief that talent is all about practice. It’s easy to forget that others may think it’s all about talent – your developers may believe some users fail because they are stupid, and some of your users may believe they’re just not good enough to succeed. It’s worth checking what they believe.

Another implication is that we should provide assistance and guidance to users as they are doing the task. We should try to avoid interrupting their flow. This suggests providing Help and advice within the application screens themselves.

Thirdly, we should praise people for their effort rather than for their talent.

Bounce

BBC Radio 4 Four Thought

What do you think?

What does the iPad 3 mean for Technical Authors? Part 2: Hardware

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In yesterday’s post, we looked at the iPad as a medium for delivering User Assistance. In this post, we’ll look at the iPad’s hardware, with a view for it being used by Technical Authors to create User Assistance.  In further posts, we’ll look at iPad software Technical Authors can use.

iPad as a tool for Technical Authors

With prices starting at £329, the iPad is what QVC calls “a considered purchase”. Unless your heart rules your head, you’ll take a moment to think what else you could buy with your hard earned cash. Having said that, there’s enough people are buying iPads to make it the hottest piece of technology around.

As a device, the iPad is well balanced, very tactile and, let’s face it, cool. It’s also robust, able to take a lot of knocks and bumps.

The iPad makes for a lightweight companion – it weighs in at 650gms. However, if you’re you’re writing for long periods of time you’ll probably also need the external keyboard. So realistically, the weight is around 1.1kg, which is roughly the same as the 11.6″ Macbook Air and other Ultrabooks. Remember, Ultrabooks are at least double the price of an iPad; if you were to buy a £400 notebook, then you’d be lugging around at least 3kg.

The iPad’s retina display not only make images stunning, it also reduces the amount of eyestrain caused by looking at screen for long periods of time. If you find you can write for only a limited amount of the day, then the iPad may be the solution for you.

If you’re working at a desk, then, in addition to an external keyboard, you would probably want a stand for the iPad. If you wanted to connect the iPad to a VGA screen, then you’d also need to purchase Apple’s £25 VGA adapter cable.

The iPad has a built-in camera, which means you’re able to take high quality photos of programmers’ whiteboard scribbles, and make ad-hoc video or audio recordings of brain dumps from subject matter experts. The camera can also take high quality images of products and any components.

The iPad does not have a slot for SD cards or USB stick, so external storage is only available ‘in the cloud’.

Battery life is very impressive, at around 10 hours.

If you’re not tied to a desk (i.e. you do work in more than one single location) then the iPad delivers as a lightweight portable device. Even if you are tied to a desk, then it still may be worth considering for those who suffer from eye strain.

Your future as a republisher

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Visualisation Magazine has created a diagram showing how you can use Web 2.0 tools to increase the number of readers of your content – “building an online presence”. It shows the extent to which content can be republished today, through free sites, Web feeds and embedded content. It also shows how you can monitor and receive statistical information on its progress.

So why keep your content tucked away in a Help file, when it can be republished in some many other places as well?

Link to an explanation of the diagram.

Is search dying? Your manual within 140 characters?

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Internet Psychologist Graham Jones wrote an article last week, in which he stated, search is dying, and is being replaced by sharing information socially.

“So worried is Microsoft about Google that they haven’t realised that Google is not their real competition any more. It is the likes of Twitter and Ecademy…Google already knows this. Much of their labs work and their adaptations of what they already offer are geared to sharing information socially. They realise that search as we know it is dying. Microsoft is so focused on fighting Google, they haven’t realised they are on the wrong battlefield.”

Let’s assume Graham is correct. Where does this leave online user assistance?

Since Online Help was introduced, technical communicators have provided hypertext links, key word search and an index to help users find information.

Today, there is greater emphasis on key word search (finding stuff via Google), and we’ve seen a few authors add tag clouds too.

So how could online user assistance (“Help”) be shared socially? Is it likely that someone will respond to each question by tweeting a link to a particular page in a Help file?

That’s incredibly labour-intensive. For Support teams to answer queries via Twitter might be less time-intensive than responding to emails, but it may be difficult to provide an answer within 140 characters. Most likely, they could provide to links to places where the question is answered.

We’ve talked about the emergence of “landing pages” in Web based Help (so have Michael Hughes and Matthew Ellison),  and that may be a less intensive way to guide people to the information they need. By this I mean, point people towards say 6 landing pages, from which they can be guided quickly to the information they need.

It may also be difficult for users to pose their questions within the limitations of Twitter.

A more likely scenario, I believe, would be to create Twitter avatars. The fictional characters from “Mad Men” post regular tweets about their imaginary lives. If Don Draper and Peggy Olsen can tweet, then why not create a personas for your customers and let them do the same? Billy the Beginner and Patty the Power user, for example? Their posts could guide customers through the key tasks via a series of daily Twitter posts. 

Of course, this is more than about how to best use Twitter. It’s about social networks, the ideas from the Cluetrain Manifesto and Web 2.0 ideas of syndicating content, collaborating with your user base and aggregating content.

Graham Jones concluded by saying ”just concentrate on providing and sharing good material”.  Technical Authors can help the organisation provide good material. What we may all have to work out is how we can share this material in more effective ways.

What can Technical Authors learn from celebrity chefs and musicians?

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We wrote recently about the Attention Economy and the challenges faced by technical publications departments. So what about other business sectors that are facing similar problems – can we learn from them?

Andrew Savikas has been looking at some of the ways in which the Publishing industry, aspiring young musicians and celebrity chefs have been tackling the problem of getting value from content.

He said:

“The thing that most publishers (and authors) spend most of their time fretting about (making it, selling it, distributing it, “protecting” it) isn’t the thing that their customers are actually buying….Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business.”

From the music industry, he highlighted advice from Trent Reznor:

“[W]hat you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods.”

Emerging musicians such as Emily Barker have used MySpace to do this sort of thing. Emily has nearly 5,000 followers – not bad for a folk singer from Bridgetown, Western Australia (pop. 2000). Notice also, her last album recording was funded by her fans.

From celebrity chefs, Savikas observed:

“Celebrity chefs aren’t particularly worried that doing TV shows and selling cookbooks describing exactly how to make the food they serve in their restaurants will harm business.”

So what could technical authors do that’s similar? Perhaps:

  •  Publish some free content on the Web, with further information available in exchange for an email address. You could then mail this database of users with news and updates, to increase customer loyalty and engagement with your products. These email addresses could then be passed to your Marketing department – some people may actually be prospects rather than customers. 
  • Offer premium “products” in addition to the standard downloadable manual or online Help. This could be personalised training over the Web, or a series of animated movies. The Technical Publications content could as a feeder for these additional services.

Why you should write Help for your competitors’ products

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At our “Developing your career as a technical author”  course yesterday there was a great discussion about meeting the needs of “Generation Y” – the part of the working population under 27 who have grown up with the Internet. It’s a group that makes up about 13% of the working population.

We talked about the fact that they acquire so much of  their information from the Web. From many of them, if Google can’t find your content, it doesn’t exist.

This led me to think, if your competitors’  Help is not available on the Web, then why not write it for them?  With the majority of Generation Y using Google to find Help, there’s a good chance they would end up reading your version of Help.

This gives you the opportunity to explain the complexities of a particular competitor’s product and contrast it with your company’s offering. You could end up persuading prospects to buy your product instead of those of your competitors. You might even win some of your competitors’ customers.