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Will More
Technology Improve Online Help?
October 27, 2004
Synopsis: Microsoft has
a new infrastructure for online help that offers some efficiencies
but those gains
won't improve 'user assistance.' And they continue a costly
industry habit of focusing inwardly, on tools, instead of outwardly,
on users. I recently
came across a Microsoft
article touting its new generation of help authoring,
Longhorn (as in 'impaled upon...').
Having already been dismayed at the usability losses incurred
by Flash Help and PDF-as-Help, this is yet
another attempt at sprucing up the technology in the name
of better serving confused users and it will surely backfire
even if no one ever notices or holds it accountable. (I almost
forgot, have you ever used one of MS's task-panel help system
that
trap you in trite procedures, never allowing you to figure
out how the system works or what a control does?)
By my estimation
this new system is 95% diminishing returns (DR). When something
is 50% DR it is simple ignorance, the product of weak thinking;
75%=willful
neglect; 95%=a sham, a costly diversion at the expense of genuine
value.
Of what I perceive as Longhorn's main forces:
- I understand and appreciate the value of moving toward structured,
plain-text editing (XML) but we don't need a new, probably-proprietary
infrastructure for that.
- I continue to be highly doubtful
of the monontonous plea for the holy grail of 'semantic
markup' whether in content-centric
websites or Help. Yes, every efficiency gained should return
value to users as time can be spent on genuine research,
but you should already be extremely efficient with help
editing.
- As for the info-fascist notion that Longhorn better
helps users because MS knows what users need and MS says
it's task info, don't tell users what they need... tell
them
answers
to software mysteries.
Once users need help because of the
usability failures of a system, the limiting factor in Help
is <blare of trumpets>information</bot>,
not authoring tools or presentation doo-dads. Good information,
for those still uninitiated, comes from merciless research,
good writing, and back-to-basics Help systems with a TOC/Index/Search.
(For an example of such a system, on a web page, see another
one of my sites, RSIRescue.com.) This focus on technology
is a continuation of the inward-facing emphasis
of the IT
industry,
which perpetuates
the
cycle of violence against users. In
usability circles, it is a recent concern that we need
to start 'speaking with a single voice.' I see this Help
issue
as one crying out for the synergy of a monotonous message:
Don't judge what information users need or how they
need it; document everything and present it in a fully-accessible,
WinMac-compliant
system with a TOC/Index/Search panel, preferably available
anytime,
anywhere.
More info on Longhorn:
Commentary: http://www.winwriters.com/articles/longhorn/
SDK: http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/
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