af·fec·tive

Relating to moods, feelings, and attitudes

With technology becoming part of everyday life, sometimes the traditional approach to writing user documentation just doesn't meet users' needs.

It can be the case that the formal and succinct approach to writing User Assistance isn't right for users of your product or service.

It's often about adding an emotional factor, being more conversational and less formal. It's something we call "Affective Writing" or "Affective Assistance". You can see this approach being used in the online User Assistance for applications such Firefox, where they reported a 13% reduction in the number support calls as a result of adopting this approach.

Cherryleaf has been a pioneer of this approach in the technical communications community, where it has generated a great deal of interest at conferences and in magazines.

Changes in consumer technology

Consumer technology today:

Consumer technology in previous decades:

Creating User Assistance that works

With our help, you can have user documentation that works – that's appropriate to your product and customer base. In other words, the assistance you provide to your users on how to get the best out our your product becomes more effective.

What is Affective Writing?

It has also been described in these articles:

"The Emotion Factor in User Manuals: How to Use Affective Assistance to Create More Loyal Customers". Published in Intercom Dec 2010/Jan 2011, and Communicator Winter 2010/11

iPad: Manual not included (The Independent newspaper).

Contact us

Contact us if you would like to know more about how we can help you. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.