User research

[Tom Storer <tstorer_tw -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

We're about to start writing a set of documents to
help our OEM partners program our products'
functionality into their applications. We've decided
we need a much meatier audience analysis than what we
now have, which is basically "tech people."

Although we are a pretty big company, with our major
customers buying tens of thousands of licenses, the
doc department has little history of serious user
research, apart from a couple of questionnaires done
without any real research into how to do it
effectively.

I'd like to hear about how you've done it: what sort
of questions are asked apart from who will use it,
what skills will they have, how will they use it... or
is that all there is to it? Also, any recommendations
for helpful books or websites on the subject of user
research would also be great.

Thanks in advance!

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Help Authoring Seminar 2003, coming soon to a city near you! Attend this
educational and affordable one-day seminar covering existing and emerging
trends in Help authoring technology. See http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l2.

A new book on Single Sourcing has been released by William Andrew
Publishing: _Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation_
is now available at: http://www.williamandrew.com/titles/1491.html.

---
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.