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Richard Smith wonders: <<has anyone seen numbers on how users access help?
I've heard tons of opinions, but not seen any real research. How many users
key F1? How many users use "What's this" help? How many users first use the
index v. TOC, etc.>>
"Real research" isn't going to help you much either, unless that research
coincidentally happens to have involved a near-identical audience. You need
to actually contact the users of your product and find out how _they_ invoke
help. Anything else is pure guesswork. I'm sure you could find a study that
proves conclusively that users hit F1, but if your audience uses
voice-activated software (because they need their hands free), that
conclusive study will be entirely irrelevant; ditto if you're talking about
point-of-sales systems and touch-screen kiosks, with no mouse, and a variety
of other contexts.
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
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