Re: Yelp

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 13:13, Shaun McCance wrote:

> I'm trying to build solid infastructure here for more than just the help
> files of the CD player.  Did any of these usability tests involve having
> systems administrators looking at the the sysadmin guide?  Or developers
> looking at an API reference?  Or somebody looking at the manual for her
> digital camera?

I've been involved with a study involving developers and end users
anyway, with content appropriate to their domain.  At that point we were
concentrating more on the browser's features than in the context in
which it was used, though.

>From what I remember, the developers were more interested in cute ways
of saving and copying/pasting things like scripts and code samples than
in printing them out for future reference.  And the end users were more
interested in having the application designed better so they never had
to go near any online help in the first place, and in having good
bookmarking facilities just in case they did...

Of course that's absolutely not to say that the same necessarily applies
to the wider range of people you're trying to support here (I don't
recall us including anything akin to API docs for example, which is the
sort of thing I'd probably want a hard copy of myself).  I was just
commenting that printing really hasn't been up there on the list of
users' must-haves any time I've seen usability tests of anything to do
with online documentation.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems