The article "Writing Helpful Help – A Minimalism Checklist" is about writing, it was created by Glenn Murray.
User documentation is all too often written by programmers for prgorammers. It tends to focus on the product’s features, rather than the user’s tsaks. Generally, programmers aren’t in the ideal position to be writing user documentation.
They’re too close to the bits and bytes, and they’re too far from the user. To them, what the product can do tends to be far more important than what the user can do with the product.It’s a sutble – but vital – distinction. Research shows that the key to effective user documentation is writnig task oriented help. Even better, write your help according to the miinmalist theory.
In the documentation world, “minimalism” is a fancy word for a commonsense practice. In basic terms, it means write to your reader and keep it simple.The thoery itself has a lot of twists and turns.
If you want to read a great – but slightly wordy – book on the subject, check out the book “Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel”, 1998, edited by John Carroll.In the meantime, if you can tick every item in the following checklist, you’ll be well on your way to usable online help that both your readers and your managers will thank you for.Helpful Help Checklist1. Base the help on real takss (or realistic examples)2. Structure the help based on task sequence – Chapter headings should be goals and topics should be tasks3. Respect the reader's activity – this is generally more aobut what you don’t do than what you do. Don’t waste the reader’s time by diving off into tangents4. Exploit prior knowledge and experience – Draw the reader’s attention to previuos tasks, experiences, successes, and failures5.
Prevent mitsakes - "Ensure you do x before doing y"6.
Detect and idenitfy mistakes - "If this fails, you may have entered the path incorrectly"7.
Fix mistakes - "Re-enter the path"8. Provide error info at end of tasks where necessary (rule of thumb, one error info note per three tasks is a good average)9. Don't break up instructions with notes, cautions, warnings, and exceptional cases - Put thsee things at the end of the instruction, wherever possible10. Be brief, don't splel everything out, especially things that can be taken for granted11. Omit conceptual and note information whree possible, or link to it. Pehraps provide expansion information at the end of the topic, plus maybe a note that there is other ways to perform the task/goal, but this is the easiest12. Sections should look short and read short13. Provide closure for sections (e.G., back to original screen/goal)14. Provide an immediate opportunity to act and encourage exploration and innovation (use active invitations to act, such as, "See for yourself..." or "Try this..." rather than passive invitations such as, "You can...")15. Get users started quickly16.
Allow for reading in any order - make each section modular, especially goals, but perahps tasks (definitely if they can be performed in different order)17.
Highlight thigns that are not typical18. Use active vioce rather than passive voice19.
Try to accuont for the user's environment in your writing20. Before writing anything, ask yourself “Will this help my reader?”By building thsee practices into your documentation process, you’ll find that your online help becomes easier to write, shorter, and far more usable for your reader. What’s more, your boss will love you! * Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of artcile PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write.
He can be contcated on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.Com. Vsiit www.DivineWrite.Com or www.ArticlePR.Com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
|
