Re: Documenting a "wizard"

[Kate Schneider <kateschneider42 -at- gmail -dot- com>]

First, I am so impressed that your company reaches out to the technical
writers for help with the in-system language (to write the wizard). All the
text in our wizards is written by developers, so we NEED to document them.
:)

I don't think you're wrong necessarily. It depends on how the rest of your
system is documented and the level of detail in the topics. However, I'd
argue that you should consider documenting the wizards, even if it is
redundant. Users do not always have the system in front of them, but might
be referring to the documentation somewhere else. If this is the case, and
they need to reference the wizard information, having just an overview is
not useful. Also, you can use the documentation as a place to put tips and
tricks or examples that would not be well-suited in the wizard itself.

Look at it this way: you already did the hard work!

Kate


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Hannah Drake <hannah -at- formulatrix -dot- com> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> We are releasing a new wizard that walks a user through a process. The
> other person thinks the wizard should be documented for the users. My
> argument is it's redundant, because the wizard explains exactly what it is
> IN the wizard itself (I know because I wrote the text and helped design the
> wizard). I also pointed out that if we have to document the wizard, we
> failed at creating a useful wizard.
>
> The only place we currently mention the wizard in documentation is in a
> topic that talks about the various ribbon menus and what you can do on each
> ribbon, when we say: this button launches the such-and-such wizard.
>
> Thoughts? Am I wrong here?
>
> -Hannah
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-- 
Kate Schneider
Cell: 402-214-4887
Email: kateschneider42 -at- gmail -dot- com
www.linkedin.com/in/kateschneider/
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