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Subject:Re: Documenting A Moving Target From:WandaJane Phillips <wandajp -at- ANDYNE -dot- ON -dot- CA> Date:Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:06:28 -0500
beth_staats -at- artisoft -dot- com wrote:
> [<snip:> I am trying to document a product that
> is still being developed, not just tweaked.]
> -----------------------------------------
> I had to document a very complicated piece of that software. It was a tangled
> web of many interrelated windows. In an effort to figure it all out, I wound up
> doing an Alt+Print screen of each window, pasting them into a Word doc,
> printing it out, then cutting out the windows and taping them to my cubie wall
> with arrows showing the flow. Seeing it all together even helped the
> developers; one saw it and said "there's TOO MANY windows."One similar experience happened when we ran some simple usability tests
using sales and tech support folks as crash test dummies. The developers
were in a room with a television monitor watching over the shoulders of
the testers. It was really enlightening to them to *see* someone try to
figure out their work, and how it really balled the works up when the
docs said go right but they'd changed it to left!!
Now, I know about most changes because the developers come to ask my
*usability* opinion.
--
WandaJane Phillips
Senior Technical Writer -- Pablo
Andyne Computing
Usual disclaimers in effect
