At my current company, the product management team's vision for the next generation of their products is to eliminate end-user UI usage documentation entirely and provide contextual in-product help using video walkthrough tools such as walk.me.
To make a case for using video as an additional learning resource instead of a replacement for context-sensitive UI Help, I'm looking for information on the percentages of technology users who are visual, textual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.
Case studies of companies who went to a pure-video documentation model and found that their support calls went up and user satisfaction went down would also be useful.
Any suggestions?
I went through this @ my previous employer. We had distributed PDFs for our "current" product but for the "next generation" product, we moved to Confluence. Our manager used this as an opportunity to ditch the things she didn't like in the user guide and declared the following guiding principles for the "next" generation documentation:
None of those guiding principles flew. The first customer to see "the next generation user guide" wanted terminology to be changed to match the way the system was customized for them (some customers called a thing "groups" while other customers called them "classes" and the "group" customer didn't want to see "class" because it didn't match their system), they wanted step-by-step instructions, they wanted screenshots, and they wanted to be able to print the whole thing by distributing a PDF.
- Write system – not role-based, not custom configured – documentation - even though the "current" product user guides were written for a specific level of user
- Don’t write the obvious which were defined as “no step-by-step instructions” and “don’t use the name of any UI object in the doc” because anything the user saw in the UI was to be considered “obvious.” - even though the "current" product user guides had step-by-step instructions and references to the UI.
- No screenshots - as in NONE, even though the "current" product user guides had screen shots when it was appropriate to ensure the user had the right information.
- No PDF - as in NONE, and everyone will be instructed to use the online Confluence site because as soon as you publish a PDF, it is obsolete.
Ultimately, after stating over and over (and over) again that we would use those 4 guiding principles, we caved on all of them and gave the customer what they wanted. I can tell you that no amount of discussion about what the customer had currently made a difference - it wasn't up for negotiation.
Thus, if your product managers are bound and determined to go their route, go with it. Just remember that if a menu and/or screen that is shown in 10 videos changes, you may have to re-record 10 videos and, on top of that, you will not have an easy way to track which videos do actually need to be changed without watching them (unless you have detailed video scripts with the names of the screens documented in those scripts).
Good luck!
It's also important to know when to ask for help and to know when the answer you receive is all you're going to get. It's how you ask for help that makes you a better person and believe me, I've asked for help a gazillion times over the years. I have learned that when the person on the other end of the conversation is giving you the hint that you're a pest, you stop writing to that person. This is the email conversation I had yesterday:
From: A Website for Word Tools
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 8:06 AM
To: Me
Subject: RE: Quick Question (I Hope!)
Hi,
In order to find information, I would need to Google too and to examine the found results before I could reply. That was what I did in relation to my first reply too. Therefore, it always takes time even if I may be able to find useful results faster than many. I never just grab a link without checking. Even if I have huge amounts of links but I have to dig deep into my material to make sure I find the most relevant in the situation. Sometimes/often, I could write code faster than finding and checking other people’s code - but since many people want my assistance, I can’t.
Best regards
From: Me
Sent: 18. januar 2017 14:59
To: A Website for Word Tools
Subject: RE: Quick Question (I Hope!)
I understood your statement about not having time to “provide personal assistance for free) and didn’t mean to imply I was asking you to code what I needed! I had just found the first link helpful and was asking if you had a second link handy in your Favorites. I can google - no problem.
Thank you for writing back.
From: A Website for Word Tools
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 7:33 AM
To: Me
Subject: RE: Quick Question (I Hope!)
It is possible to tweak the macro. Please search the internet for solutions. Even if I wanted to, I do not have the time to provide personal assistance for free (as also stated on my website - but I provided assistance in the first place anyway ;-)).
Best regards
From: Me
Sent: 18. januar 2017 14:23
To: A Website for Word Tools
Subject: RE: RE: Quick Question (I Hope!)
Thanks for the link! I was able to get that macro to work. It doesn’t help me with the “Body Text Indent, DRM_P_Body Text Indent, HCIS_P_BodyTextIndent” style, though. The constant is that the styles begin with “DRM_” and if it’s in the middle of the style, there’s a comma (,) between the next name.
Do you have a resource that you could point me to get rid of the “DRM_*” style when it’s in the middle?
From: A Website for Word Tools
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 3:05 PM
To: Me
Subject: RE: Quick Question (I Hope!)
You need a macro. Google “VBA word rename styles” or something like that.
Example: https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22494609/word-vba-need-to-rename-a-set-styles.html
From: Me
Sent: 17. januar 2017 21:37
To: A Website for Word Tools
Subject: Quick Question (I Hope!)
I have styles that are named like this:
How do I find all instances of styles that have "DRM_ " in the name of the style and replace it with “HCIS_”?
Me
I think the person on the other end of the email conversation was helpful.
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