January Meeting Review: Trends in Software User Assistance

by Jean Zartner

Presented by Joe Welinske [ Bio at http://www.writersua.com/jwbio.htm ]

What is Software User Assistance?

The user assistance (UA) skill set includes many areas in which writers may be involved. UA has expanded the opportunities for people in technical communication.

Tip for Tech Writers:

Look at the areas in the UA skill set to see where you might expand your horizons beyond writing and editing:

• Task analysis
• SME interviewing
• Indexing, search
• Instructional design, eLearning
• Localization, translation
• Content management
• Multimedia development
• Information design
• Usability testing, user interface design
• Quality assurance, testing
• Coding online help
• Coding web content
• Programming

Joe’s company, Writers UA, conducts surveys to analyze how technical writers rank various UA tools and skills. He showed three bar graphs to illustrate data that has been collected.

• Writing Valued Highly
  • Developing content is our core value.
  • Other highly valued user assistance skills are procedures, reference, and interviewing.
• We Work with More than Help
  • Browser-based help has gone from the bottom to the top of the chart in the last six years.
  • Microsoft HTML Help is down from approximately 70% to 30% of respondents who think it is vital.
• Windows is the Dominant Platform
  • Windows and the Web are still major platforms.
  • Mac and mobile platforms moved up in the past few years.

Tip for Tech Writers:

Find more details on the surveys at the WritersUA website and watch for more surveys you can participate in next month.

Joe Welinske presenting at January's STC RMC chapter meeting

Instructional Video

The trend is to show rather than tell and let learners view and listen rather than read.
Many companies are putting their instructional videos on YouTube. People tend to start their search on Google and YouTube now rather than going to a company website. They can also embed the video on their own website.

Instructional videos can be effective even if they are “home grown.” For instance, Windows put together a TV show where they had two “geeks” who talked through development styles. They were actual developers, rather than professional talent. As they talked, screenshots would appear, showing the code.

We can do powerful things with the cheap software and equipment that is available for video editing. Even iPhones can take great videos. Most good video happens during editing. It takes a lot of video to edit it down to a good final product.

Tip for Tech Writers:

Video should be presented in very small chunks. Joe finds that 90 seconds is optimum.

Many eLearning developers have very little understanding of UA.

Tip for Tech Writers:

• Get into the instructional design realm where your UA skills are helpful.
• Learn about instructional design and think about the learner’s experience when you put the video together. You are not just presenting information; your goal is to have a behavior occur.

Several audience members suggested ways to learn more about instructional design, including:

• American Society for Training and Development
• International Society for Performance and Instruction
• Denver Metro eLearning Developers
• eLearning Guild

Mobile Apps

Devices will continue to evolve. Hundreds of enterprise organizations are working on modules for managers and salespeople on the road. Our future jobs are probably with devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone 7.

Tip for Tech Writers:

• Try to find your way into working on any mobile project your company is doing.
• Learn how to communicate back and forth with the mobile app developers.

You cannot just scale down single source something from a traditional platform. You have to craft it. Due to the tiny amount of real estate, every word has to be the BEST word. As an example, Joe showed a mini one-screen quick start tutorial to help users navigate through the screens on an iPhone.

The mobile reader (such as a Kindle) is an interesting new delivery medium. We could use our more traditional documentation on these, using a single source.

Customer Contact

As we technical writers become more involved in writing for customer contact, our contributions will showcase our skills.

Initial customer contact:

• Welcome pages: For example, Twitter’s TweetDeck shows six areas the user can go to, with a brief description of each. When the user clicks an area, a website appears with more information.
• Installation of software programs: Provide tips to help with the install and wizards to help with settings.

Tips via email:

• As soon as someone buys your product, send an email with helpful tips, such as Apple does.
• You can use the same email list that marketing uses, but do NOT include sales information.
• You could include a link to the user guide.

Tip for Tech Writers:

Look for ways to get involved with front-end assistance.

Other areas of customer contact:

• User Communities
• Blogs
• RSS Feeds
• Findability through search engines

Tip for Tech Writers:

The single most important thing for technical writers as we go into the future is to put our documentation on public-facing servers.