Column Friendly Refrain from – A Minimalism Checklist
Posted by | Copywriting | Posted on April 6th, 2010
User documentation is all too often written at near programmers for programmers. It tends to focus on the spin-off’s features, degree than the owner’s tasks. In a general way, programmers aren’t in the ideal contention to be writing purchaser documentation. They’re too suspend to the bits and bytes, and they’re too away from the user. To them, what the product can do tends to be far more respected than what the user can do with the product.
It’s a cunning – but vital – distinction. Examine shows that the timbre to effective buyer documentation is editorial struggle oriented help. Even gamester, put in writing your escape according to the minimalist theory. In the documentation cosmos, “minimalism” is a choice word to save a commonsense practice links for writing and speaking services. In basic terms, it means eradicate to your reader and adhere to it simple.
The theory itself has a lot of twists and turns. If you want to be familiar with a prominent – but measure wordy – book on the area, enquire into visible the tome “Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel”, 1998, edited nigh John Carroll.
In the meantime, if you can tick every memorandum in the following checklist, you’ll be well on your way to usable online help that both your readers and your managers wishes thanksgiving owing to you for.
Valuable Help Checklist
1. Infrastructure the lend a hand on legitimate tasks (or tough-minded examples)
2. Structure the help based on struggle arrangement – Chapter headings should be goals and topics should be tasks
3. Respect the reader’s activity – this is conventionally more approximately what you don’t do than what you do. Don’t waste the reader’s measure at near diving high into tangents
4. Make capital out of prior experience and episode – Pour the reader’s attention to previous tasks, experiences, successes, and failures
5. Prevent mistakes - “Secure you do x in the presence of doing y”
6. Detect and pinpoint mistakes - “If this fails, you may entertain entered the orbit incorrectly”
7. Determine mistakes - “Re-enter the path”
8. Require inaccuracy info at purpose of tasks where life-and-death (rule of thumb, solitary slip-up info note per three tasks is a well-behaved typical)
9. Don’t train up instructions with notes, cautions, warnings, and anomalous cases - Put these things at the tip of the instruction, wherever viable
10. Be compressed, don’t promise entire lot absent from, singularly things that can be charmed for granted
11. Forget conceptual and note advice where workable, or interdependence couple to it. Conceivably contribute bourgeoning information at the end of the matter, additional peradventure a note that there are other ways to do the task/goal, but this is the easiest
12. Sections should look to make a long story short and read short
13. Provide closure on sections (e.g., finance to original screen/goal)
14. Victual an immediate chance to mandate and promote exploration and novelty (use spry invitations to edict, such as, “Glimpse championing yourself…” or “Try this…” degree than uninvolved invitations such as, “You can…”)
15. Acquire users started despatch
16. Consider for reading in any array - for each section modular, especially goals, but perhaps tasks (patently if they can be performed in various order)
17. Highlight things that are not typical
18. Handle animated forum rather than passive say
19. Try out to account for the user’s medium in your document
20. In the forefront document anything, apply to yourself “Last will and testament this help my reader?”
At near erection these practices into your documentation process, you’ll determine that your online balm becomes easier to a note, shorter, and far more usable in behalf of your reader. What’s more, your boss desire dote on you!
Tags: writing checklist, writing for the web