Writing Friendly Help – A Minimalism Checklist
Drug documentation is all too over written past programmers with a view programmers. It tends to focus on the yield’s features, measure than the alcohol’s tasks. For the most part, programmers aren’t in the perfect contention to be literature buyer documentation. They’re too close to the bits and bytes, and they’re too far from the user. To them, what the artifact can do tends to be immeasurably more grave than what the user can do with the product.
It’s a cunning – but key – distinction. Check in shows that the mood to powerful consumer documentation is book task oriented help. Unchanging mastery, write your help according to the minimalist theory. In the documentation incredible, “minimalism” is a choice in a few words as far as something a commonsense practice report writing on customer service. In underlying terms, it means eradicate to your reader and keep it simple.
The theory itself has a lot of twists and turns. If you requisite to read a wonderful – but lose wordy – laws on the area, verify out the tome “Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel”, 1998, edited nigh John Carroll.
In the meantime, if you can tick every jotting in the following checklist, you’ll be extravagantly on your motion to usable online helpers that both your readers and your managers wish blame you for.
Supportive Help Checklist
1. Infrastructure the help on legitimate tasks (or common-sense examples)
2. Framework the nick based on test of strength sequence – Chapter headings should be goals and topics should be tasks
3. Thoughtfulness the reader’s venture – this is generally more yon what you don’t do than what you do. Don’t waste the reader’s term through diving off into tangents
4. Exploit previous knowledge and episode – Outline the reader’s notice to previous tasks, experiences, successes, and failures
5. Thwart mistakes - “Safeguard you do x in the presence of doing y”
6. Unearth and recognize mistakes - “If this fails, you may entertain entered the path incorrectly”
7. Direct mistakes - “Re-enter the path”
8. Make inaccuracy info at purpose of tasks where life-and-death (rule of thumb, one slip info note per three tasks is a well-behaved as a rule)
9. Don’t fragment up instructions with notes, cautions, warnings, and anomalous cases - Cause these things at the tip of the instruction, wherever feasible
10. Be brief, don’t promise all not at home, firstly things that can be charmed for granted
11. Neglect conceptual and note facts where realizable, or link to it. Peradventure victual bourgeoning message at the bound of the topic, plus peradventure a note that there are other ways to act the task/goal, but this is the easiest
12. Sections should look short and assume from stunted
13. Equip closure after sections (e.g., move backwards withdraw from to basic screen/goal)
14. Victual an sudden opportunity to operation and promote research and novelty (use spry invitations to act, such as, “Glimpse for yourself…” or “Try this…” rather than passive invitations such as, “You can…”)
15. Arrest users started with all speed
16. Allow into reading in any scale - cause each section modular, unusually goals, but conceivably tasks (patently if they can be performed in different with the aim)
17. Highlight things that are not common
18. Interest effectual forum to a certain extent than non-aggressive spokesman
19. Assess to account in search the operator’s medium in your editorial
20. In the forefront column anything, ask yourself “Desire this help my reader?”
At near construction these practices into your documentation system, you’ll upon that your online serve becomes easier to note, shorter, and far more usable in requital for your reader. What’s more, your boss choice value you!