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Subject:Re: More help needed From:Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 2 Oct 2000 05:18:33 -0700 (PDT)
--- Sharon Deitch <sharon -at- sintecmedia -dot- com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Again I come to you with questions. First let me thank everyone who
> sent their ideas to me regarding screen terminology.
>
> When documenting data records, which of the following would you find
> preferable:
>
> + Listing all the fields in a table, including whether the field is
> required and what to fill in the field (also what type of data can be
> input, where appropriate).
>
> + Numbered steps that take the user through the data screen,
> including all of the above information.
>
> I prefer one method, and my boss the other. I'm purposely not saying
> which I prefer, so as not to skew the results. He's asked me to find
> out from you good people which is considered the "acceptable" way.
We did a project recently where we used BOTH approaches. First, we did
form/field descriptions for everything on over 100 user screens in an
ASCII User Interface (I know it's old technology, but it's what we have
to work with at the moment). Then we created a Procedures section where
we walked users through how to fill out each form on each screen. That
way users could either get information on specific fields in a form, if
that's all they needed, or a step-by-step procedure for filling out any
given form.
