A Lesson in Usability
- Harini Babu
Contents
Usability testing brings with it images of sterile usability testing labs… users grappling with tasks set out for them, unsure if the test measured their merits or those of the help system…and experts talking in hushed tones of ‘cognitivism, constructivism, behaviourism and what-have-you-ism’. A close observation and accurate record of user interaction with the artifact to be tested, in a real-life environment, can often ascertain if the document was worth its screen captures and fonts by establishing the only fact that counts – Did it help or not? As a writer, who began my career in communication at an advertising agency, I have often used a few ‘tricks-of-the-trade’ routinely used by copywriters, (like emphasis on the word FREE in advertisements), with predictably happy results, from the ‘user-perspective’.
The copywriter turning technical writer in me now often wonders if the same tricks could not be tweaked or similar ones identified to enhance the batting-average of technical communicators, on the usability front, as well.
The first thing I want to point to you is that the technical communicator has one advantage over the copywriter. While both seek to inform their readers, the technical writer’s communication is purposefully sought by the reader, however reluctantly, as against the copywriter’s piece, which is an intrusion into the reader’s agenda. An advertisement must leverage every bit of ingenuity the copywriter can muster, to compel the reader to read his advertisement, instead of the day’s headlines or that juicy tit bit on page three. And that’s not something to be sneezed at!
So allow me to go ahead and show you some sure-fire arsenal used by copywriters, geared to win the battle for men’s minds. A technical writer could use them to as much advantage, if not more.
Homework Comes First
Any copywriter worth her thinking cap knows that she stands no chance of producing successful advertising unless she studies the product she is trying to sell. It’s no different for a technical communicator. If you can’t be bothered to do this kind of homework, you may occasionally luck into a successful help system, but always run the risk of ‘skidding on the slippery road of skilful irrelevance’.
Find out what kind of help systems the competition offers for similar products, and with what success. This will give you some direction.
Next research among your target audience. Find out how they think about the kind of product you are creating help for, what language they use when discussing the subject, what attributes are important to them, and what assurance and promises from the help system would make them most likely to reach for it before they reach for the phone to call the support desk.
I know, not many of us have the luxury of time or resources to do this. But informal conversations, say with half a dozen bankers can sometimes help a technical communicator authoring help for a banking solution, more than a formal brief from an engineering project manager, who can barely sneak a peek outside the ivory tower of his codes and bugs.
Make It a Point to Position
Positioning in marketing communication, simply put, is ‘what the product does, and who it is for’. For example, you can position your user manuals as trouble shooting guides for database administrators or procedural manuals for non-technical customers. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it helps you to define the scope of content development for yourself.
Second, it clearly sets expectations for users seeking help from your artifact. While this does not exclude, a multifarious user profile, for your communication, it unambiguously defines the primary audience whose needs you will assuredly meet, while also helping users with other profiles, if you can. There is another fringe benefit in it for you. Now your manager holding up to you that customer feedback form where the customer’s wet-behind-the-ear secretary ranked your manual at 1 for usability, on a scale of 1- 5, won’t make yours go pink, because your manual was positioned as reference guides for implementing engineers.
Give It a First Class Ticket!
Image means personality. The personality of a technical documentation product is an amalgamation of many things – its positioning, its packaging, its style of authoring and above all the nature of the artifact itself. Every artifact of user assistance must be thought of as a contribution to the brand image. It must consistently project the same image that the product seeks to project, version after version. It pays to give it a studied image of quality – a first class ticket. If your product documentation looks shoddy, it subtly rubs off on the product as well.
Where’s Your Big Idea?
You can do homework from now to the end of eternity, but will never get a 5 on 5 on a customer feedback form unless you also invent big ideas. Unless your documentation contains a big idea for user-help, it will remain a door stopper in the customer’s office. Big ideas come from the unconscious. But your unconscious mind has to be well informed. Stuff your conscious mind with information, and then switch off your rational thought process. Suddenly, if there is a hyperlink from the unconscious, the big idea wells up like a welcome pop-up! It could be an idea to embed a screen-led demo in a traditionally ‘wordy’ manual, or pithy topic captions that pique the reader’s need for help and promise to satisfy it…something innovative that fits your help strategy to perfection.
It’s All in the Topic Header
On an average, five times as many people read only the headline of the topic, as they read the rest of the content. It follows that unless your headline sells your promise of help, you have lost your reader. So state your proposition loud and clear in your headline, don’t bury it in the body text, which nine out of ten people may not read. For example, say “10 simple steps to set up your database” in your topic title instead of an insipid “Invoke the Database Configurator.” Your reader is in a hurry, distracted and rearing to get his task completed. Your topic headers must telegraph what you want to say.
Lay it Out Effectively
You’ve heard this one before, but it can’t be stressed enough. Don’t address your readers as though they were gathered together in a conference room. When people read your content, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter to help solve an issue they are faced with. One person to another, second person, singular. It pays to write short sentences and short paragraphs, while avoiding difficult words. Don’t say Invoke when Open will do just as well. Don’t write essays. Tell it with specifics.
Segregate the ‘have-to-know’ sections from the ‘nice-to-know’ sections to keep the reading pithy.
Research indicates that readers look first at the illustration or visual, then at the headline and proceed to read the remaining content next. So put these elements in that order – illustrations, like the screen capture, at the top, the headline under, with the body following it.
Illustrations are given priority, by users, over body content. And picture captions are read by four times as many people as the body content. So caption them to advantage. For example, The caption “Warning: Do not execute the EOD batch run before completion of TDS Calculation” under the error screen can drive home a point effectively and indelibly.
Typography Success
The eye is a creature of habit. People are used to reading books, magazines and newspapers in lower case. Do not make the mistake of setting topic headers and sub headers in capital letters. Do not set sections of your content in reverse – white type on a black background. It repels readership as wax paper repels water; it has a cloudy look.
If you have to set lengthy topics, the following typographical devices can increase readership:
- A subhead of two lines, between the topic header and the body text, heightens reader comprehension of independent sections
- Limit your opening paragraph to a maximum of 11 words
- After two or three inches of body content, insert a sub head and thereafter throughout. It keeps the reader marching forward.
- Make some of the sub heads interrogative, to excite interest
- Most often, you will have a lot of unrelated facts to recite. Don’t use connectives. Simply bullet or number them.
- Use leading (line-spacing) between paragraphs to increase readership significantly
As someone said, God is in the details. A technical communicator has little choice but to agree.
Few technical writers are ambitious. It does not occur to several of us that if we tried hard enough, we can dramatically increase the usability of our creations, halve the organization’s investments on customer support channels, and make ourselves famous. Really! We must hit the ball straight into the pavilion! And vie for that niche among the immortals! If we reach for the stars, we may not actually grab a couple, but surely, we won’t end up with a fistful of mud either.
I have written only about those aspects of written communication that I know work from my own experience in the advertising arena and the peek I’ve had into the world of technical communication. That is why this article talks nothing about ideas for optimal indexing, the effective mapping of DDLC with SDLC or how XML editors are used innovatively by new generation technical communicators in Timbuktu. References
Confession of An Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.
Compiled By
Harini Babu, inspired by a session by Suman Kumar on Low Cost Usability Testing, at the 8th STC Annual Conference, Bangalore.
About the Author
Harini Babu, currently working with Infosys Technologies Ltd., has a decade’s experience working as copywriter and creative consultant for several advertising agencies. She has also led corporate communication initiatives for mid-sized technology companies, before making her foray into the world of technical communication, a year ago. Harini can be reached at harini_sbabu@yahoo.com
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