Research on software help

Hello,

I'm interested in any data on how users (end users and developers)  
access and use help documentation. In particular, I'm interested in  
the following:

_ Expectations or results when users encounter help documentation on  
the developer's website or via a search engine (I'm familiar with  
studies from 10 or more years ago indicating low user expectations  
from the documentation in a software help menu)

_ The success of different approaches to information architecture for  
online documentation; for example, self-contained, one-page topics  
versus the longstanding "help manual" model with several levels of  
hierarchy

_ Any differences between approaches that work well for end users  
specifically or for developers

Cate


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The real technologybehind all of our other technologiesis language.
Norman Fischer
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