Chapter 10 - Barker - Designing for Task Orientation

Chapter 10 Barker -Designing for Task Orientation
By Team 6 – Owens

This chapter gives the technical writer the basics of book design and covers guidelines for designing to meet human user needs.

• Designing for Different Groups, consider your navigational aids, scenarios, icons, and metaphors
• Design for Specific Program Issues and include job performance aids, background information, special forms
• Meet the User’s Task Needs – by telling them how to do things rather than describing the terms and fields on the screen.
• Meet the User’s Information Needs – by understanding how information is used in the job setting and writing the help to let the user know how the program supports that work.
• Match the User’s Computer Experience – consider the predominant type of user whether novice, experienced or expert and tailor the help to that level of understanding.
• Enhance the User’s Subject-Matter Background – which will enhance the usability of the software, like adding a special glossary of background terms used by the user.
• Leverage the User’s Workplace – by getting help from co-workers or suggestions for support groups.
• Meet the User’s Learning Preferences – choosing the media and designing documents according to that media.
• Meet the User’s Usage Pattern – tailoring your software based on how the users will reference the document – regularly, casually, or strictly troubleshooting.

After deciding what design features you would like, you have to figure out what you can afford to have.

Online Help:

Designing for online help should parallel the process of designing for print. Identify and list the online help topics. Topics are defined as “an identifiable body of usable information associated with a user activity.” (p. 317). The user’s view the topics as the final destination because it provides information to get the user back to the task of making the program work.

Decide What Design Features to Use. Design features are the electronic interface elements of a help system. One of the main differences between print manuals and help lies in the umber of features available to you with the online media.

Accommodating Groups of Users:

You need to constantly consider the degrees of experience among groups of users as each will react differently. This means you have to write two or three manuals in one book. Two ways to group users are by degree of experience, or based on professional roles.

The experienced user is more patient with confidence in the program whereas the novice will blame the software.

Matching User’s Problem Solving Methods:

• No one carefully reads more than two sentences at a time, so based on that:
• Keep paragraphs short
• Arrange information into tables and lists wherever possible
• Put important information at the beginning of each paragraph.
• Most users begin to use the table of contents before they read the manual.
• Make the table of contents complete
• Use both an abbreviated and an elaborate table of contents for complex material
• Use chapter-by-chapter tables of contents
• Make table of contents headings task-oriented
• Most users go to the manual or help only after they have failed to perform a task
• Be sensitive to user’s state of mind after failure
• Make descriptions of error recovery clear and complete
• Emphasize getting back to real world tasks.
• Most readers do not read the introduction first
• Replace it with useful information about user needs
• Replace it with material designed to get them applying the program right away.
• Most readers do not read any section in its entirety
• Tell them which sections go for particular tasks
• Make sure all descriptions contain complete information for performing the task
• Repeat important information as necessary.
  

Design Guide for Printed Documentation:

• Use navigation aids
• Use cross references
• Running headers and footers
• Book titles
• Graphic cues and icons
• Layering – has two types of information on the same page to satisfy two types of users
  

A good software manual contains useful patterns to help the user identify information easily. Some structuring methods are cuing (including visual patterns – icons, rules, fonts, caps, etc.)

Indexes and tables of contents make up the two most important user tracking and navigational devices in any manual. And lists of figures and tables make up a main element in the usability of a document

Solutions for Online Documentation:

• Using nonscrolling regions so as the user reads down they don’t lose sight of the topic
• Expanded or stretch text allows you to put more into a topic by use of an expanded link
• Keyword searches helps user electronically find topics
• Indexes – most online help compilers will generate this automatically
• Links and jumps allows user to go from one topic to another easily
• Popups – quick way to toggle on and off added information or definition
• Context sensitivity – user goes directly from a problem with a screen or field directly to the help topic.
• Histories – users can retrace steps
• Bookmarks – annotations – newer online systems have elaborate ways to use bookmarks