Slight departure from Estimate for On-Line Project

[Paul Beck <Paul_Beck -at- 3MAIL -dot- 3COM -dot- COM>]

Faith this is an excellent reply.  Thank you for the distinction between
electronic documents and online documents.  This brings up a question. If you
are producing a true online document, how much of a departure from the printed
page does that entail?

With the levels of information complexity, I can see technical reference
material closer to the page based approach.   There are graphical things you
can produce (for example flowcharts that are hyperlinked) for some of the
information, but moving into a multimedia or a video type presentation for
highly technical information may not be that efficient.

As you move closer to the, "hey I just got this product and I have to install,
configure and operate it" levels of technical detail the user needs, there are
more graphical ways of presenting (and mapping) information. We can make better
use of the hyperspace (if that's what it really is) in the computers memory to
achieve better results in simplifying and presenting the information.  However,
it can be questioned as to how much value there is to having the medium move
into video or motion graphics (cartoons if you will) for transferring knowledge
to the user.

Has there been any testing to see where the cutoff point might be?  As the
ultimate user, I find the state-of-the-art in video productions interesting
because of the medium.  But, the amount of information really presented is
seriously lacking.  There may be a trade-off between attention span and
absorbtion.  True, that sounds like a critique of the Television realm rather
than of online documentation, but I still think there are some considerations
to be made in this area.

Tutorials would be a form of technical communication where more video and
multimedial presentation would be effective.  For a user who needs direct and
accurate information this presentation may be extremely lacking.

How far is too far?  How much is still not enough?

jPLBj


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Re: Paul's message. I agree that it shouldn't take a writer 3
years to learn how to write online documents -- that seemed off-
the-wall to me. But apart from that, the estimates presented
seem reasonable. I think these estimates are for genuine online
documents, not page-based documents distributed electronically
(aka electronic documents). I think they are estimates for ideal
circumstances, and should be taken as such.

I disagree that the time is all spent on the learning curve for
the tool. There's a lot of structuring required in creating
online documents, and it is different than the kind of structuring
we're accustomed to in books. To produce a *good*, usable online
document, the author has to spend quite a bit of time planning its
structure, which can be especially difficult if the online document is
being derived from paper.

I also agree that there is often a gulf between academic theory and
reality, but in this case I don't think it's as big as Paul is
suggesting. Also, this gulf can serve a useful purpose. While I
almost never have time to do my work the best possible way or spend
as much time as I think is needed on a given project, the theorists
provide something to aim for by discussing what can be done under
ideal conditions. If I had to do every project as I do now, and didn't
have any hope that I might be able to improve on that, work would
become both boring and depressing in short order!

Faith