What should my Help do? was: Online Help Usability

[Steve Owens <uso01 -at- EAGLE -dot- UNIDATA -dot- COM>]

LaVonna (lffunkhouser -at- halnet -dot- com) says:
> In my current project, I've been told (by my team leader) that my
help should include these things:
>>  context-sensitive, F1 help
>> a "browse" type help, accessed by clicking on "help" in the upper
>  right portion of the window

> The browse help will provide screen captures with hotspots, which
> in effect allows context-sensitive help when you are not in that
> window.

> I think that my help should include tips for the user who is using
> our new, improved Unix-based GUI but who was used to the older,
> VAX-based software.  To me, these are the kinds of questions the user
> is going to be asking (I used to enter it on a screen called QRS; how do
> I do it now?), and this kind of help is *at least* as important as
> help that tells him what the Insert button does or what the Variabe Type
> field is for.

        I think it's far more important.  People at least have a hope
of figuring out the GUI, particularly since they're more visual and
becoming more and more prevalent these days.  Figuring out how to do
the task, on the other hand, isn't necessarily easier because they're
using a spiffy GUI.

> BTW, team leader said I can do this but only after doing the
> context-sensitive and hotspot help.  My planning reveals that I
> will have at least 202 unique topics to define.

        I can't understand what your team leader's thinking is...

> The software team is not thrilled about the screen captures.  They
> think it will slow down the help and make users not use the help.

        They're right - and wrong.  Screen captures, particularly
profuse screen captures (or any other similarly detailed graphic) will
require more bandwidth, CPU and memory.  Whether it affects your users
will depend upon the relative resources they have available.

        If you have one Sparc 10 workstation per user, I don't think
the users will notice or care. If you have five or ten users on
Xterminals working off one low-performance workstation, they'll
definitely notice - and slow online help is worse than useless (it's
maddening).  They will definitely not use the help.  Quick reaction
time is paramount in this situation.  The help should be able to give
the user the answer fast enough that it doesn't break the workflow.
Otherwise the user will only go to it as a desparate last resort.

        On the other hand, a picture or diagram can have a very high
bandwidth, particularly if it's extremely interactive and leads to
other topics.  So if you only have a few screen captures and not one
or two for every topic, yes, it's probably worth it.  But if you can't
use the online help without wading through tens of screen captures,
no, it's probably not worth it.

Steven J. Owens
uso01 -at- unidata -dot- com