Embedded Help System: The Emerging Help Technology

Embedded user assistance is a cutting-edge approach towards delivering online help that provides dynamic, context-sensitive, task-based information. Such a help system is very different from other types of online help in the sense that it requires very short and focused topics. This article examines embedded help system as an emerging help presentation that offers the potential for users to access information when and where they need it while using a software program. It also evaluates the ability of embedded help systems to overcome usability issues that are inherent in traditional online help systems.

Biswas, Debarshi Gupta. Indus (2007). Articles>User Experience

Fundamentals of Business Process Documentation

It is important to identify, understand, and evaluate key business processes to determine how effective they are in accomplishing the business goals of an organization. As a result, end-to-end business process documentation is increasingly becoming a significant initiative for many organizations. Essentially, process documentation should communicate the guidelines to support specific processes, and can be used by a wide range of business units, partners, process leaders, and anyone who is involved in these processes. Interviewing people who follow a business process is an effective method toward understanding how the business process is executed. While interviewing the right people to understand how they execute processes, it is essential that the writers look beyond just recording what they are told about the process. Handling situations like these also provide opportunities for the writers to evolve to business domain analysts or subject matter experts

Biswas, Debarshi Gupta. Indus (2008). Articles>TC

Adopting Documentation Usability Techniques to Alleviate Cognitive Friction

Usability is the combination of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which the users accomplish defined goals in a given environment. User-centered documentation matches the users' mental model, thereby helping the users find information they want quickly and easily in their hour of need. The list of documentation usability criteria is fairly subjective at this time, and various opinionated discussion groups have contributed to this. Usable documentation is based on a deep understanding of the users' tasks, and this understanding can only be gained through interviewing representative users. Applying information architecture techniques, the content within documentation should be properly chunked so that the users can assimilate the information properly. Procedural guides should have a well-defined and searchable index that enables users to connect key application terms to their correct context. User-friendly documentation is always succinct, but never at the expense of omitting critical/useful information. It should be developed using a structured process so that it starts with the big picture and gradually adds lower level of details, addressing the needs of every unique group of users. Finally, the documentation must be tested among a representative group of users, and their feedback should be incorporated to make sure that it has met all of the major usability criteria.

Biswas, Debarshi Gupta and Suranjana Dasgupta. STC Usability SIG (2009). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Documentation