Re: Website Documentation Procedures - Educating an Employer

["Collin Turner" <straylightsghost -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Thank you Paul,

Much appreciated advice. The client is, unfortunately, not experienced with
all of this. I am. The strings are:

A - The developers are in India
B - I've told them about all I can - they need to see a wider "Industry
Standard" view of documentation procedures.
C - I also know it's likely not going to change much, but I want to know
that THEY know the procedure before putting me into "the hard place" on this
one. (Sort of a CYA procedure for me).

I am off to look at the docs now!
The 30 day countdown to launch and finalized documentation began...yesterday
(and I have still not seen the Site. HA! I love a challenge - Oh...did I
mention they wanted this to go out in printed form as well??)

-Collin



On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Paul Hanson <phanson -at- quintrex -dot- com> wrote:

> Collin,
>
> You should be involved in the design of the website. You should contribute
> helper text and embedded user assistance (UA) so that the user interface
> (UI) is designed so that there is no need for online Help in the standard
> 'open a new window to read the help text' type of thing. Embedded UA is the
> way to go. Think about the fairly common things you may do online: buy a
> ticket for a WWE event, buy flowers for your significant other, or reserve a
> hotel room. How many times, during those tasks, did you see information you
> needed within the context of the fields you had to fill out? For example,
> when I went to buy a Ticketmaster ticket for Memphis in May in 2007, all the
> stuff I needed to know was there.
>
> This is not a new idea if you've been to any of Scott DeLoach's
> presentations @ a WinWriters conference. Here's a link:
> http://www.writersua.com/articles/embedded/index.html to an overview of
> the approach. Here's a direct link to another presentation:
> http://www.clickstart.net/presentations/wwe3_embedded.ppt
>
> Additionally, look through Jared Spool's website. He may have some info re:
> this. I'd look but I'm cramming 12 weeks of doc changes into today and
> Tue-Friday next week.
>
> Paul Hanson
> Technical Writer
> RoboHelp ACE -
> http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/team_macromedia/robohelp.html
> Quintrex Data Systems http://www.quintrex.com
> email: phanson at quintrex.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+phanson=quintrex -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:
> techwr-l-bounces+phanson <techwr-l-bounces%2Bphanson>=quintrex.com@
> lists.techwr-l.com] On Behalf Of Collin Turner
> Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 11:21 AM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Website Documentation Procedures - Educating an Employer
>
> Not that I hope to change anything...
>
> I need to provide some solid 3rd party (preferably "official")
> documentation
> procedures for providing documentation for websites. Specifically
> pre-launch
> - at what point during the Dev cycle should the documentation be created,
> reviewed, etc. Standard procedure for the Industry.
>
> Anybody have some useful sources?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Collin
>
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