Re: Content of Help Systems

Subject: Re: Content of Help Systems
From: Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:03:22 -0400


Do what best suits your company and your customers. We recently
discovered that our older customers (in age) prefer printed books over
PDF, and online Help over any other medium for procedural info. Our
younger customers (in age) preferred everything online, if not in the
help, then in PDF for conceptual and help for procedural. but those
are my customers. Yours may be different.

On 9/20/05, M Parcell <mbtechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Hi there. I was hoping to get some feedback from you
> guys to help us make a decision at my company because
> we're debating what the content of a help system
> should be. We deliver both user guides (online only)
> and help systems. Some people maintain that these two
> mediums should have different kinds of information
> (e.g., the user guides should contain background and
> conceptual information as well as task-based
> information while help systems should contain
> primarily task-based information but little conceptual
> information). Others maintain that the help system
> should contain both background/conceptual information
> *and* task-based information. Our question is: Should
> help system content duplicate documentation content?
> Or, do these items serve distinctly different purposes
> that merit different content?

--
Bill Swallow
HATT List Owner
WWP-Users List Owner
42.8162,-73.7736
http://techcommdood.blogspot.com

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References:
Content of Help Systems: From: M Parcell

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