Article on writing help: "The Help Landscape: A Mile Wide and 30 Seconds Deep"

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

UXmatters published a nice article a couple of days ago on how to write
help pages. <http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000222.php>

Some excerpts:

      * "Help needs to be a mile wide — it must cover everything — and
        30 seconds deep — tackling only small amounts of detail at any
        given point."
      * "Tips, rules, examples, navigation (Where do I?), and
        interactions that are not obvious when first viewing a user
        interface—like dragging an object—are good candidates for a
        30-second read."
      * "Dedicate the first 30 seconds of the Help user experience to
        users who know almost enough to complete the task without Help."

The article's recommendations match well with our recent shift to
topic-based help <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TopicBasedHelp> and my
guidelines for the structure of Ubuntu Help pages
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuHelp/PageStructure>.

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/