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Big Ideas in User Assistance

 

 

UA is necessary for most digital products [Back]

It’s unusual for a UI to be self-disclosing to all your users. Most of the time UA is necessary for a good user experience. A few simple pop-up explanations can prevent a user from getting hung up on a dialog box or eCommerce web page. An FAQ answer the questions that most often arise. For more complex products, users will want a comprehensive PDF manual or help system. Knowledge Base articles and a support forum address more complex problems. Because most of today's computers grew up with digital technology, we can write much briefer UA that assumes knowledge of many familiar UI operations. But digital products will fail without UA.

 

 

Curated content beats the noise of forums for first-tier info [Back]

Software should provide well-designed, well-written UA for the first-tier information that many users will want. A user trying to learn the basic features of your product should not be thrown into a forum. Many users are reluctant to post queries, especially for simple issues. When users search a forum they are likely to find multiple voices exchanging opinions on a highly specific topic that’s not exactly what they’re interested in. When users purchase a digital product, they expect one or more forms of curated UA.

 

 

The UA must be strong where the UI is weak [Back]

Sometimes a dialog box or some other part of a UI is not especiallywell designed. Or, the design is good, but the functionality is complex or conceptually slippery. When the UI isn’t going to work for many users, the UA must step in with content that’s findable, relevant, complete enough, and clearly written.

Low-quality documentation skips over what is hard to explain. But there is no value writing procedures that explain what users can figure out themselves from the UI. You add value when your procedures are strong in those places where the UI is weak.

 

The Least-First principle: Link to more complete info [Back]

A very good strategy is to provide links from the brief information that typically appears in UI text or embedded help to more detailed procedural or conceptual information. This is the “least first” strategy. Most of the time, the brief information will do the job, and you are providing a pathway to more complete information for those who want it.

There is a risk, however, of relying exclusively on the least-first strategy. UI text and pop-ups only help users who’ve found the part of the UI that they need to be working with. Centralized tells users where in the UI they need to be.

 

Findability is crucial [Back]

If they can’t find your UA content, they can’t use it. If finding the content appears to be burdensome or uncertain of success, users may choose to do without it—and possibly ignore the new feature your company has worked so hard to include in itd latest release. There are a variety of affordances for good findability—each with its own strengths and weaknesses. You need to think carefully about whether to include search, a table of contents, embedded help, and more. You need to carefully implement each of the affordances you include.

 

The UA profession is broad in scope [Back]


UI designers think about how users engage their UIs—a challenging task. UA designers can’t just look at the UI and write. To add real value, they must, much like UI designers, think about how users engage the UI.

But UA professionals must also think about how users will engage the various kinds of UA content they create and maintain--how users will find it, what they can understand, how much detail they want, what should be text, graphics, video. UA also encompasses nurturing community-generated content in forums and establishing paid support plans with real-time expert assistance.