Determining When to Use Show-Me Helps and Demos
http://www.stc.org/ConfProceed/2005/PDFs/0043.pdf

Norris Bradford, Annette
STC Proceedings
2005

Abstract:

The availability of powerful yet easy-to-use multimedia tools enables technical writers to consider a powerful new form of embedded user assistance: show-me help. This paper provides an overview of who is currently using show- me help--some current research, some history, and some definitions. It offers some guidance in choosing tools, designing show-me help, and deciding when to include then, concentrating on consideration of your users, potential topics, subsequent releases, and translation. It also suggests how show-me helps can be reused as part of product education and single-sourced into user assistance from the Web. When this information is presented in a conference session, the final part of that session will be a workshop in which a sample show me will be built using the QarbonTM ViewletBuilderTM tool. For this session, you have a choice to watch or do. You can watch as I create a show me for Windows(R) Explorer in this session or you can go to www.qarbon.com, download the demo version of ViewletBuilder, and do the exercises along with me.