Re: Research on software help

When Help is preconceived, then usability is not. If one needs to rely  
on Help to explain the communication that is intended by the  
interface, then that interface is wrong, since the functionality is  
not as the target audience expects it. Therefore, users have not been  
studied well enough.
On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:58 PM, Cate de Heer wrote:

> 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
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> The real technologybehind all of our other technologiesis language.
> Norman Fischer
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Greg Austin
[email protected]
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