Delivery formats for big complicated information?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Mandy wonders: <<I have a big, complicated document that currently we 
work with in Word and deliver as a PDF with hyperlinks, which our users 
say is good as far as it goes, but doesn't give them all the info they 
need, in a way that's easy to use.>>

Sounds like you've got a good start on the content, but that they're 
having problems with the presentation. In addition, you listed 8 
parameters of each transaction, but noted that there are 4 more 
parameters they want you to address. This suggests you need to both add 
the new information to your existing structure and find out what other 
information is missing. Talk to the users, and while you're at it, ask 
them what usability problems they encounter.

You may need to do considerable work on cleaning up the presentation so 
that it's crystal clear. One traditional problem with PDF files is that 
they're often not designed for onscreen use (e.g., portrait format for 
use on a landscape-format monitor requires too much scrolling or 
zooming out to the point that the text is unreadable). Have you 
optimized your PDF files for onscreen display? For the screens you know 
your audience is using? To support onscreen use? Or are you just 
dumping paper manuals online, apart from adding a few hyperlinks?

One presentation approach that sometimes works very well indeed when 
you have lots of data is what I call a "baseball card". If you've ever 
taken a close look at one of these things, you'll see that the 
presentation format is highly standardized: the player's name always 
appears in the same place, the sequence of statistics is always the 
same, and the position of each type of statistic on the card is always 
the same. Would this model be adaptable to your situation?

<<One of the users suggested putting the document into an Access 
database, in order to accomplish being able to search for an element in 
a transaction, and then on other transactions that use that element.>>

That's potentially a really bad solution, for a variety of reasons. 
First, someone has to develop the database application and troubleshoot 
it to ensure that the underlying logic is bulletproof. Second, you have 
to ensure that every user has Access installed on their computer (not 
likely); if not, you have to develop a self-running version of Access. 
Third, you have to ensure that everyone knows how to use Access (even 
more unlikely); this means you'll need to develop an extremely simple 
user interface that protects the user from the complexity of Access, 
and plan for lots of training. Fourth, if you distribute a database, 
how are you going to protect the integrity of its data? (It can be 
done, but you have to plan for this.)

<<On a related note, there's also some agitation from a senior 
developer to deliver our developer-oriented docs, like the Developers 
Guide, which is also heavily cross-referenced, in a web page format.>>

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, provided that all the other 
developers agree. No point catering to the needs of a single user and 
alienating all the others, right?

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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