Re: on-line vs. hard copy (long)

["Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- EXPERSOFT -dot- COM>]

Melissa,

Well, you *can* take a paper-based user manual and throw it online;
but then it's called online *documentation*, *not*  online *help*.
And the relative success or failure of this approach, widely known
as "shovelware", depends on the amount of planning and forethought
that went into the paper book.

If the material is well chunked and well organized and the transitional
verbiage is cut to the barest minimum, the book has a relatively decent
chance to succeed as online documentation. But that's a big *if* and you
really have to plan for the approach to work well.

Additionally, you need to set the users expectations for online documentation.
If you *tell* them it's online help, they're gonna be plenty mad at you when
they find out it isn't. The expectations for online help are firmly entrenched
in the users minds at this point -- but more on that later. Let's finish with
online docs first.

Will your users be familiar with Lotus Notes. I'm not, I've never used it, so
I'm not familiar with the interface. Users are familiar with the winhelp
interface, so documents that are shoveled online using the windows help
engine are accepted because the user knows how they work. Throwing a new
doc and a new interface at a user makes that user learn two things at once --
how to use the interface as well as what's in the book. Not fair to the user.

Also, users differentiate between looking stuff up online and reading stuff
on paper (note the terminology!). Conceptual information is particularly
difficult to absorb from online text. If online docs are substituted for
paper docs in the product delivery, you have to provide a means by which
users can print the docs. If you don't, you'll have a very angry user base
to deal with. And remember, when you go all the way to hypertext (via
winhelp or html, for example), when the users print the doc, all the entry
points are gone. Hyperlinks don't work anymore and there is no functional
toc or index. You've left your user with nothing but a bunch of disassociated
pages. Shame on you.  ;-)

So much for online documentation, now to the help.

Online help is a very different animal from online documentation. Users
expectations are set to a very narrow focus, and well they should be.
When the user presses F1, you can assume they are already frustrated.
They need information *now*. Typically, users access online help for
between 30 seconds and 2 minutes at a time. It's your job to provide
just exactly the information they need in the place they expect to find
it if you want to meet their needs in that short a time.

Usability studies show that users will seldom browse a help file to find
the contextual information they need -- they don't very often even use
the scroll bar. If the information isn't immediately visible, they will
turn elsewhere -- to a co-worker or to technical support most likely.

When you analyse the typical user's approach to finding information and
study the structure of the prototypical help file, you understand why
online documentation just doesn't fit the bill. And I'm not saying that
you cannot combine online documentation and online help. You can, but
it's not easy. And if you do, at least the context-sensitive information
should be formatted prototypically.

And after all that, there's an additional caveat. Some users will not
access online help or online documentation -- period. Mostly it's a
'once burned, twice shy' reaction -- they've seen so many poorly
developed online help files -- files in which the information was not
readily available, missing, burried in mountains of text, or worse
(your shovelware?) -- they'll do anything not to have to go online
for information ever again.

Sue Gallagher
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com
     -- The _Guide_ is definitive.
        Reality is frequently inaccurate.

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