tekom-Jahrestagung 2012 - ActiveDoc

User Assistance
UA 9
Presentation
Adding Useful Interactivity to Online Help
Nicoletta A. Bleiel, ComponentOne, a division of GrapeCity, inc., Pittsburgh, USA
Introduction
Content is King, but adding a measured dose interactivity to your online
Help will increase readability and usability, as well as make it more
compelling. This paper discusses a number of simple ways to improve
your Help, even while single sourcing.
Online Help systems for software user assistance can be improved
with interactivity, and adding social media options can also serve other
company goals. There are more options for interactivity when creating
browser-based Help systems, but it is possible to incorporate some
features into HTML Help systems as well.
Help systems are learning modules that share all the characteristics of
websites — they have content, a table of contents, search, and navigation.
It should be noted that the research on both ELearning and the
web encourages interactivity.
Considering Interactivity
When deciding what interactivity would be most useful in your Help
system, keep in mind the following:
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Will the user understand and expect the relevant action that occurs?
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If content is hidden, will the user know how to access it?
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Does the additional user input actually improve the overall experience?
(From: “Bringing Interactivity To Your Website With Web Standards”
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/02/03/
bringing-interactivity-to-your-website-with-web-standards/)
Also consider other goals, such as improving the SEO of your Help system,
increasing your company’s Twitter followers, collecting feedback
and building a community, and incorporating useful social media elements
into your Help.
Interactivity Options
There are many options for adding interactivity, including the ones below.
The ease of implementation will depend upon the Help Authoring
Tool or authoring environment you are using.
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Expanding/Collapsing Text can be used to layer information by category.
In print outputs, the content remains in list form; no additional
adjustment is necessary.
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Image Maps are interactive graphics that link to additional information.
Using conditions, they can be easily modified for print output.
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Glossary Popups are popup links that display definitions. They are a
great option for documentation that contains a great deal of company
or industry-specific terminology and/or acronyms.
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Google Maps with custom locations can easily be created and embedded,
and can provide useful content that is interactive.
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Twitter has several types of buttons that can be used to increase the
visibility of your Help, or encourage customers to follow your compa-
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