Re: Research on software help // Me too

What Meghan wrote (i.e., I ditto that).

ljr


On Apr 8, 2011, at 1:16 PM, Meghan Ede wrote:

> From my personal experience running usability studies:
>
> - people get really pissed off when "help" simply rephrases the  
> interface e.g. "under the file menu, you will find..."
>
> - people are usually looking for "how" to do something, rather than  
> an explanation of the UI, especially tips, tricks or trouble-shooting
>
> - it takes only a few (usually only one) bad experience with a piece  
> of unhelpful help content for the user to stop using help altogether  
> on that product
>
> - more technical users are, in my experience, more likely to persist  
> with a help system or online documentation than consumers, because  
> often the tasks they are performing require specific and correct  
> actions and errors can have huge impacts; they also annotate and  
> copy over good, useful help content - to an internal resource, such  
> as internal wiki
>
> - a great way to get feedback about your online help/documentation  
> is to  include a brief online survey incorporated into the help/doc  
> system, along the lines of:
>
>   1. How helpful was this topic (then have a rating scale)
>   2. What were you looking for? (open-ended)
> ...
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