Technical authors are faced with limited time and resources, so they often are faced with the dilemma as to what to include and what to leave out of their user documentation. You may ask, if 80% read only 20% of the content, is there any value in documenting the rest? Technical Authors are often great… Read more »
Category: user assistance
“The worst Help system I have ever seen”
Sarah Maddox reported from the WritersUA conference that Microsoft’s April Reagan gave a frank presentation on the planning and design that has gone into version 3 of Microsoft Help. She was quoted as saying the feedback on the Help 2 (used in Windows Vista) was poor. For example, “This is the worst help system I have ever seen”. At a previous… Read more »
User documentation – Does it matter?
It’s very hard to tell how much user documentation matters to people. One completely un-scientific way is by looking at the messages on Twitter, on any given day, that make mention of it. Below are some of the messages posted on Wednesday 4th March 2009 that mention documentation. We’ve omitted those messages that relate to… Read more »
Why bother with user documentation in recessionary times?
Although many organisations see user assistance as a “good thing”, it’s not immune to the belt tightening that many organisations face in times of difficulty. Business expert Mike Southon recommends that in recessionary times, organisations should focus on getting sales from existing customers – so customer retention becomes ever more important. There’s a virtuous circle… Read more »
Will Twitter change the way customer service is provided?
The debate about the usefulness of Twitter in User Assistance (aka technical writing) is starting to take off: Charlene Kingston will be speaking at the WritersUA conference in March about integrating Twitter. The Carphone Warehouse has started to use Twitter to support its users. See “Mind the gap” and guy1067 on Twitter Uploaded on authorSTREAM… Read more »