Method to Evaluate Manuals and Online Help
http://www.stc.org/confproceed/1999/PDFs/stc-65.pdf

Santhanam, Raji
STC Proceedings
1999

Abstract:

In these testing times when time to market for software is constantly diminishing, the demand to make manuals and online help targeted, faster, cheaper and better is a tall order. While methods and tools are being constantly developed to help us do our work faster, and better, measuring the quality of the written word remains a deficient arena. Technical Communications gurus advocate methods like surveys and usability to make better end products. However, this requires good infrastructure and management support to carry out. This paper provides a method to evaluate technical manuals and online help for software products. It discusses how you can gauge a manual’s quality and suggests a method to quantify its effectiveness. It is cheap to implement and is customizable for your organization. All you need is good knowledge of your audience, and some faith and persistence!