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Cherryleaf survey results - Uptake of new Help trends
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During March and April 2003, Cherryleaf carried out an online survey into the current trends in technical communication. One of the questions we asked was:
- Do the online user assistance documents produced by your organization contain the following advanced capabilities?
The respondents were able to select more than one tool from the list provided.
Description of the trends
See our article The Future of Help? Trends in online user assistance for a description of these trends.
Our findings
Our findings are summarised in the graph below:
Feature |
Percentage saying yes |
Embedding Help into the application |
54.2 |
Live, real-time content |
7.3 |
Interactive tutorials and demos |
34.4 |
Links to technical support information |
58.3 |
Searching using plain English sentences |
26 |
Feedback on questions asked and topics used by users |
16.7 |
n=96
Conclusion
The survey shows a remarkably high uptake of the new trends. Many of these capabilites are only possible with Web-based Help, and it may be an indication that Web based Help is replacing Microsoft's HTMLHelp as the preferred technology for delivering Help for Windows applications.
Want to incorporate these capabilities into your documentation?
Cherryleaf can help you incorporate these capabilities into your documentation. Contact us if you would like to know more.
Let us know what you think
We welcome your comments and thoughts on this article.