TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I've only begun to scratch the surface on this one.
An early classic paper I've seen cited just about everywhere is Nowaczyk & James, 1993, in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. "Applying minimal manual principles for documentation of graphical user interfaces." Ordered a copy through my library but they're a little slow. I'm dying to read this one -- I believe the conclusion was that screenshots were largely unnecessary, and in fact could detract from usability. This might be the one where they compared three manuals with identical text, one was all-text, one was text with partial screen captures, one was text with full screen captures. (I could be thinking of another paper here, but there are some similarities.) Text-only and full-screen were comparable in effectiveness (of instruction), partial captures were bad news. Seemed to mess with the user's mental model of the software.
Research was largely taken over and developed by Hans van der Meij (John Carroll's co-author on some landmark papers on minimalism) and his protégé Mark Gellevrij at University of Twente in Netherlands. Gellevrij did his doctoral dissertation on this, which is freely available -- if you have time to read it. :) I believe they had similar results, although they started showing that screenshots could be helpful at times, beyond mere text. I believe the term most often used in the research, btw, is "screen captures."
I saw one or two others that were even more recent that seemed to flip-flop on these results a little bit. Also, there was a third researcher in the group at U. of Twente but I forget his name.
Keep in mind, though, it's one big happy family of guys citing other guys in these articles, and my search has been limited to IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication and a couple of others, based on what I have access to. There could be a gold mine of other research that I have no knowledge of. And as I say, I've only begun to read this collection of articles. There are also others not in the professional journal channels that I need to read, combed from conferences, blogs, and the like.
It's a big pile of stuff, although the formal stuff is relatively limited. If you come across a really good article or post or blog entry or conference paper on this, *please share*!! I would be most grateful.
Thanks. Hope that helps a little bit. There's a real need for somebody to bring all this research on this topic together, to give us Tech Writers some guidelines on when and when not to use screenshots, in what context, and what type to use. But I'll tell you this -- I'm finding that in my own work, doing online help for a web-based GUI, less is more. Whenever I can lose a screen grab, I do it.
Oh yes, there was a more informal article by William Horton in the STC trade mag, "Technical Communication," called "Dump the Dumb Screen Dumps." That was interesting.
A lot of this stuff is just, put on your searching cap.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: Leonard C. Porrello [mailto:Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- SoleraTec -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 5:49 PM
To: Janoff, Steve; Fred Ridder; madelynboudreaux -at- ge -dot- com; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Examples of Minimalist Writing
Steve,
Can you point me to any of the screenshot research that you mention?
Leonard
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
om] On Behalf Of Janoff, Steve
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 5:25 PM
To: Fred Ridder; madelynboudreaux -at- ge -dot- com; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Examples of Minimalist Writing
" screenshots are of questionable necessity, but the research seems to be all over the map on that one -- although mostly leaning toward not needing them, or only needing a select few."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
