RE: Screen captures (was RE: TECHWR-L Digest, Vol 35, Issue 14)

["Sean Brierley" <sbrierley -at- Accu-Time -dot- com>]

That article looks very interesting. Of course, it was written last
century and doesn't accommodate how the latest generation uses
documentation, let alone the fact that we now have
"UltimaScreenCaptureFutility version 2010" with which to make our screen
captures. <grin>

I found the article here: http://purl.org/utwente/26793.

Also, I wonder, do such articles change the way we work? Secondly, do
they change what our employers demand?

Curiously yours, partly tongue-in-cheek,

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant)
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:00 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Cc: Michael West
Subject: Screen captures (was RE: TECHWR-L Digest, Vol 35, Issue 14)



Michael West wrote:

>> How do
>> you annotate your screen shots?

>Depends. If I'm giving an instruction, I show only the thing that needs

>to be acted upon, plus enough contextual information to make it
locatable.
>Generally the nearest corner or border is more than enough.
>Verbal context is often just as useful. 

>I *never* capture a whole window just to talk about one tiny little
>piece of it. That's the sort of thing a programmer would do, not 
>a professional communicator.

Unfortunately, the research into user behavior doesn't support you on
this. As reported in "The effects of screen captures in manuals: Textual
and visual manuals compared," (Gellevij, M., Van der Meij, H., De Jong,
T, & Pieters, J., 1999. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication,
42, 77-91.), a comparison of full screen captures, partial captures, and
purely textual manuals (no captures at all) found: "For learning, the
full-screen captures manual and the textual manual were significantly
better than the partial-screen captures manual." 

In other words, by providing partial screen captures, you're doing your
users more of a disservice than not including any captures at all. Food
for thought.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=768161 includes
the abstract. I've found the whole article online in the past, but I
don't know if it's still available. <snip>
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