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.
Dawn Whitlock wonders: <<I thought it would be relatively easy to find a
comprehensive checklist for heuristic evaluation of printed documentation by
searching the web (including the STC Usability SIG web site) and the
Techwr-l site (and archives), but I have had no luck.>>
There have been many attempts to develop comprehensive heuristics for
various things; _Technical Communication_ published a special issue on Web
design a few years back that I quite enjoyed because it was quite
comprehensive. With a little translation, it should transfer readily to
printed documentation.
The problem with heuristics is that we don't yet know enough about writing
to come up with a purely mechanistic "follow the checklist" approach to
determining what constitutes good documentation. Moreover, many heuristics
are unsupported by research, and represent "we've always done it this way"
or "I like this approach" advice rather than "we've proven this to work". So
while "best practices" checklists are a good start for eliminating obvious
problems, use them with a grain of salt and don't stop there. You still need
a human eye to review the documents, and ideally, the help of the intended
audience.
Coincidentally, Kath Straub just published a concise little article on the
merits of expert review (often called "heuristic" review) vs. usability
testing: www.humanfactors.com/downloads/sep032.htm By the way, I've yet to
disagree strongly with anything I've seen published by the people at HFI.
Unlike other authorities I could name, they actually base their opinions on
research, and provide the literature citations that let you follow up and
decide whether you believe what they're saying. Speaking of which:
<<Carol Barnum cites M. Shannon Daugherty's adaptation of Nielsen's
heuristics for documentation>>
Be careful with Neilsen. He's an extremely bright man who's added much
that's good to our field, but he also frequently mistakes personal
preference for established fact. For example, I've used some of the Web
sites he claims are great based on his heuristic reviews and design
guidelines, and had a terrible time getting to where I wanted to go.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"For what I have published, I can only hope to be pardoned; but for what I
have burned, I deserve to be praised."--Alexander Pope
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or view a live demo at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
---
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.
