RE: Field-specific Help

["Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>]

I would provide a very brief "basics" section in the event there is somebody
who might have an 'interesting' interpretation of what a particular fields
mean.  It can also put you in the mindset of catching help issues that you
might otherwise miss.  Like a recent change in the system for a credit card
company that I use required that I create a new user logon and password.  I
tried, and got the error that "username must be in the proper format."
"Great," I thought to myself, "which format?"  The web page didn't have any
help for the form.  Sometimes, even the 'basics' require explanation.

Lauren
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com 
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On 
> Behalf Of l m
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 2:30 PM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Field-specific Help
> 
> Howdy~
> 
> I've been a tech writer for a long time, but have never had 
> to do online help before. Our (rather large and therefore 
> bureaucratic) company has decided to start with 
> field-specific help for our application. The app is very 
> industry-specific, so anyone who's working on it will/should 
> know the terminology. (I know, "should..." but really, it's 
> not rocket science we're doing here....) My contention is 
> that for the fields like "Name," "Address," "Phone Number," 
> etc. we do not need online help defining these fields! And 
> the other, only slightly more complex fields should be 
> labeled so that the user doesn't need further instruction.
> 
> Has anyone had experience documenting such an interface? Do I 
> really have to write, "In the Name field, enter your 
> name."??? I will also be providing the system requirements, 
> such as # of characters, whether symbols are allowed, etc. 
> but for the field definitions this just seems a little silly. 
> Anyone out there succeed in making the "Name" (or "Address" 
> or "Phone Number") field seem much more interesting in their 
> documentation, or do you all just leave it to stand on its own?
> 
> Thanks for any insight on this. I can't believe something so 
> simple has me at a standstill.
>  ~LM
> 
>        
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