Improving the effectiveness of information

For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals on-line or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation? Smart, user-centric documentation Users can be overwhelmed by long, jargon-loaded user manuals, and frustrated by a lack of clear answers. When customers don’t find a solution, blame inevitably falls on the product and the company. Bad documentation - incomplete, unclear, out of date - creates a negative engagement with products and brands. Figure 1. Smarter documentation asks users what they need to know Smart documentation leads users to success and satisfaction. These are the users who share their positive experience with family and friends, and convince them to become customers in turn. Using semantic technology, we can create the smart document...

In the October 2012 edition of Intercom, Morgan Dennis - information developer at IBM - describes a situation in which a team of writers at IBM developed a model for writing scenarios to be published with the first release of a new product. These scenarios were positioned as extended examples or use cases.  When I started reading, I was anticipating an approach and solution very similar to the one I had chosen at Be Informed to document the latest version of their semantic BPM Platform.  To me a scenario is a step-by-step description of how someone can reach a goal. So I was a bit puzzled when I read the following description in the article:  When it was published, the scenario consisted of five topics: An overview describing the business problem and explaining, at a high level, how InfoSphere BigInsights could solve that problem A description of the business and technical challenges, which identifies common challenges that users face as they deal with their b...

Just a few thoughts on the design of documentation. In my last blog I have introduced the idea of using a more goal-driven approach in documentation. To achieve a goal the user needs to perform activities, make decisions, choose from options and learn about something about the functionality of the product. This approach might sound new, but it's origin goes back to the basics of user-centered design, as described by Donald Norman in his brilliant book "The Design of Everyday Things" (1988). In his book, Norman describes how people do things with The Seven Stages of Action : Forming a goal, for example: I want to watch a movie on my television Forming the intention, for example: I will turn on the DVD Player and the television Specifying an action: I will pick up the remote control and turn the DVD Player and television on Executing the action: Attempting to do the action Perceiving the state of the world: I look at the television screen Interpreting the stat...