After conducting 21 hours of interviews with Documentation Managers and writing a 7,000 word report on the findings, two factors stand out: 1. The importance of usability testing documents.2. The importance of measurement. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. UPDATE: The report is now available for purchase via the Cherryleaf… Read more »
Cherryleaf Blog
How valuable is product documentation?
We received this email from a Documentation Manager, yesterday: “As times are getting tougher, we’ve been challenged with the age old question of “how valuable is product documentation?” – e.g. prove your worth basically! Certainly, we know that for a product to be marketable and successful, it needs documentation to support the end user. However,… Read more »
Help files – A question of trust
Last month, Forrester Research released results from a survey on how much consumers trust different sources for information. They didn’t include online Help or knowledge bases in the survey, so we don’t know how well or badly they would have come out in the survey. They found independent (non-corporate) information were the most trustworthy sources…. Read more »
When you need Help, do you press F1 or search Google?
I was at two clients in Cambridge earlier in the week, where the conversation turned to the Internet generation and how they search for information. Both publish their user documentation on their Web site, as well publish traditional PDFs and online Help files. The first client said that they’d found from their recent customer usability… Read more »
In a downturn, is it better to use contractors, permanent staff or an outsourcing company?
In a downturn, priorities in a business often change, and these changes can affect technical authors as much as others. At the London Connections event earlier this week, where I was promoting Cherryleaf’s technical writing services, I was chatting to Mike Southon about business strategies in a downturn. Mike is Visiting Fellow in Innovation and… Read more »