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Writing UI based documentation assumes that your customers ALREADY KNOW
where they need to go in your software to perform a task. Which is
completely ridiculous if your product has any sort of complexity. The
software products I am currently working on have tabs, subtabs, and then
further subtabs. There are actions buried two or three levels deep,
actions that you can do in dialog boxes, and really, no way that you could
possibly know that there are additional settings for e-mail that are NOT on
the E-mail tab.
Writing task based documentation is basically saying, "What are you trying
to do? OK, here's how you do it." Which only makes sense.
Maybe if you're documenting something simple like a mobile app, you can
write UI based documentation. I'm not saying it's not possible. But I
think that in most cases, it's much less helpful than writing task based
documentation. Your users are using software to DO something, they're
performing tasks. Why wouldn't you write the documentation to help them
perform those tasks?
Hardware documentation may be a whole different animal. I wouldn't know,
I'm not a hardware writer.
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com> wrote:
> On another forum I frequent, many of the projects discussed are required
> to follow the UI. For example, each tab of the home page is a topic.
>
> I believe the members of this forum advocate task-based documentation, but
> I thought I'd ask:
>
> What method do the TechWhirlers prefer: Task-based or UI-based
> documentation?
>
> Personally, I do things in a UI-based manner because that is what my
> clients want.
>
>
>
> Cordially,
>
> Craig Cardimon | Technical Writer
> Marketing Systems Group
>
>
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