Evaluating Online Help
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0805-Help.htm

Dalvi, Meghashri
Usability Interface
2008

Abstract:

Online help excels in providing quick access to concise information - but only when the users choose to access it. Delivering high-quality online help that satisfies all users is a hard task. Several good help authoring tools make help generation and maintenance easier, but to create good content that is highly effective is still a huge challenge. Experience shows that even after following quality guidelines or best practices, the final output may still not be good enough to satisfy the needs of your users. Heuristic evaluation of an online help system provides an initial assessment of both quality and usability. This article presents a summary of key points for evaluating online help, though you will likely want to expand the heuristics with company or product-centric metrics suitable to your application.