RE: User's guide for Web applications

["Lisa Wright" <liwright -at- qwest -dot- net>]

Laura,
Interesting question you've raised. I'm curious about the kind of app
you're supporting. Single function? Enterprise? Commercial? Back office?

We do an enterprise web application with multiple modules. Last year I
made the choice, with management support, to produce only online help in
straight HTML, so we evidently have the exact opposite approach as you.
There's also guided training, and that has its own guide. Help includes
procedural and reference information. Your note makes me wonder if we
want to consider doing a user's guide in PDF that users could choose to
download. Something to ponder.

As for your other questions/comments, I'll address them in order:

>Although we have extensive experience creating user's guides for
Windows-based apps,
> we're new to creating a similar document for a Web-based app. (In
fact, I even question 
> the need for one, but that's a fight I'm not going to win.) 

It sounds as if your application and interface are so intuitive to every
kind of user that they don't need any explanation! Definitely apply for
copyright, trademark, patent, heck, security clearance on that puppy,
because it's a first! Okay, seriously, even the most basic applications
have some sort of user assistance because someone almost inevitably asks
a question you haven't thought of. Just today, I realized a perspective
difference between users and me was creating a roadblock to
understanding and I've been working on this product for 18 months now.
You don't know everything, your engineers don't know everything.
Everyone who had a hand in constructing your software made assumptions,
and inevitably some of them were wrong. Not a criticism, just a fact.
(Humans err.)

It appears from your sig that your software has something to do with
finance? If so, I'd document to the skies. Finance is complicated! Money
makes people kooky anyway.

> How much information did you include in the application itself and in
the user's guide? 
> Did you find that some information had to be repeated in both media or
were you able to 
> make a clear distinction as to what goes in the app and what goes in
the doc? 

Everything goes in the online help. The interface provides inline
prompts as we believe necessary. Haven't been able to do much user
observation to see where we can tweak that. Adding context-sensitive
help to a web interface, as near as we've been able to figure, involves
using XML (someone please point me in another direction if you know of
anything), and I'm probably going to have us stick with page-level help,
as most of the brokerage sites seem to do.

> What level of detail did you go to in the user's guide? We're thinking
that our users 
> require a broad overview of the application, but not step-by-step,
"click here," "type 
> your name" details. 

Perhaps you should call it the "User's Overview"?  "This'll Give You a
Vague Understanding"? :-) What is it that makes you think that they
don't need procedural stuff?

> How often do you update the PDF? Do you inform users of changes to the
user's guide, and 
> if so, how? Do you include screenshots of actual Web pages in the
user's guide? If so, 
> do you encounter difficulties in keeping the PDF current? Have you
gotten any user 
> feedback about the user's guide that you've found helpful? 

Our updates would be noted in the release notes for the users. Online
help doesn't have its own how--it ships with the software. Yes, we use
screen captures. Lots. Luckily for the writer we have only a three month
release cycle! :-) Updating your PDFs should be no more difficult than
any other kind of document, unless you are doing daily releases.

Those are my thoughts, FWIW. I'd love to see more discussion of what
people are doing with web apps, particularly the more complicated ones
that go beyond "click here to proceed to checkout" !!!

Lisa Wright
Product Manager, Peak Market Center
PeakEffects


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