TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Wow, what a response! Thanks to Geoff, Pam, Donn, Meg, Joy, Carol & Susan
for your thoughtful responses to my question re: voice-over in tutorials.
The consensus seems to be that while voiceovers may be appropriate in
certain, very specific situations, they have far more drawbacks than
benefits for software tutorials for the majority of audiences. Drawbacks
include higher expense, longer turnaround times, longer download times,
poor audio quality, poor voiceover quality, distracted users, & (heaven
forbid) annoyed users.
Per one techwrler's suggestion, I've asked (nicely) our CTO to clarify
exactly what he thinks voice-overs will accomplish, user-wise. Then I can
(hopefully) offer a humble yet convincing argument against it.
(FYI - we did extensive user-testing on these tutorials -- TWICE. The first
set of testing alerted us to a TON of usability issues - which we fixed.
The second set of testing helped us to fine-tune the tutorials for
usability. During both sets of testing, we asked each "test user" to tell
us "what they would change about the tutorials if they could change
anything." A few users asked for some pretty far-out things, but *not one*
person asked for voice-overs.)
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
