[A variant of my 2013 Technical Communcations UK presentation] Dynamic delivery is delivery of context-appropriate information that can be assembled at the time of request with the most up-to-date, relevant content appropriate for the user and interface in question. Embedded content is where content becomes a seamless part of device interfaces. Products become “self-describing”, allowing users to work uninterrupted by the need to open help files or manuals. Many aspire to working in this way, but few (so far) have achieved it. This workshop looks at the benefits, requirements, and barriers related to these new types of delivery. We will look at: Why should we bother with this type of delivery? What type of techniques, technologies and skills are required to realise such a system? What are the risks at each stage?

1. Join us for Congility 2014
June 18-20 near London, UK
www.congility.com

2. Noz Urbina
~ Consultant/Trainer for Mekon Ltd.
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Content strategy, Technical Communications
10 years in content and mark-up
Author
Chairperson for Congility Events (congility.com)

3. Congility 2014
Join us for Congility 2014 June 18-20 near
London, UK!
~ 1 day of workshops
~ 2 days of conference with 3 tracks to
choose from
www.congility.com

5. A TechComm Content Strategy
“Making accurate, best-in-class manuals, help and tutorials
available to our clients in the format of their choosing.”
Blech.
It’s not about manuals, single sourcing or even content.
“Transfer contextually relevant product knowledge to staff
and customers such that we increasing customer
satisfaction and drive repeat business”

6. TechComm Content Strategy Metrics
~ Improve our results on customer
satisfaction feedback
~ Increase profit margins by increased
efficiency...
~ Raise brand profile by publishing our
content online...
~ Drive revenues by streamlining access to
appropriate content in the pre and postsales phases...

7. The Right List
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Right content
Right format
Right language
Right time

8. Tackling The Right List
~ Embedded UA
~ Dynamic Delivery

10. eUA
~ Brings the manual content to the user
...Delivers help content directly inside
hardware or software user interfaces
...At the location and time it’s most relevant.

11. eUA, EmHelp, UAP, mini-help
~ Terminology seems to be evolving
~ Integral part of the application
– Still owned by the authors
~ Minimalism is King
– Limited real estate
– Consumed at a glance (then back to work)
~ Pop-ups are evil(?)
– Scratching the surface of eUA
– It’s NOT Clippy

15. AutoCAD

16. AutoCAD

17. Ableton Live
~ Ableton Live delivers two types of
embedded help in their UI
– Info View
– Help View

18. Ableton Live

20. Benefits of eUA
Why is it better than PDF, Tripane or Context sensitive
Help?
~ Doesn’t break user context
– Proactive in giving help
– Not waiting for frustrated user
~ Speed
– Your software or device is to help them do their day job
~ Learning tool
– For users and for you! Monitor their usage of content.
– Users never wanted to read manuals in the first place!

21. Pitfalls to Avoid
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Department silos – budgets, timelines, culture
Interacting with developers
Consistency of terminology and language
Translation-readiness in the UI

23. eUA Suitable Content
~ UI item descriptions
~ Field validation guidance (number or date formats;
where the user can find the data; banned characters)
~ Concept short descriptions
~ Terminology / Glossary
~ Wizard introductions
~ Lists of related help tasks
~ Many can be reused to/from the traditional
help/manuals.

25. Dynamic Delivery quotes
“user gets to assemble content that is relevant to
them at the time of publishing”
“a web site delivers content tailored to my information
requests, and remembers the things that I'm
interested in”
“publishing at run-time, based on end-user request”
“ability for an end user to narrow down or select what
they want to see”

26. Dynamic Delivery can mean …
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On demand
Personalised/Persona-based
Situation-aware
Adaptive content

27. Meaning for today
Dynamic delivery is … providing
contextually appropriate content to users
based on their current need and situation*
*situation and context we can use interchangebly

28. Benefits of dynamic delivery
~ Removes boundaries imposed by static
publications
~ Encourages modular approach to content
authoring
~ Enables new relationships among content
objects
~ Meets the growing demands of customers to
get the content they need

29. Pitfalls to Avoid
~ It’s a specialised application. Make sure to get
the right skills
~ Structured content is much more appropriate
~ Sometimes lots of hoops to jump through to
get a server set up in the IT infrastructure

31. Dynamic Content Lifecycle

33. Steps Towards Dynamic Embedded UA
1. Audience Analysis > Personas / User Stories
Review who we’re talking to and what they need
2. Modularity & Typed Content
Break up content for more flexible delivery
3. Taxonomy
Establish clear labelling systems
4. Metadata (Semantic Content Modelling)
Get more strict about module content (Embed it)
5. Content Server
Serve it dynamically

34. Personas and User Stories

35. Personas
http://bit.ly/7coreUXsteps - Jeff Sauro
~ Personas concentrate on:
– What a user does
– What frustrates the user
– What gives the user satisfaction.
~ A narrative that describes:
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A person's typical day and experiences
Skills, attitude, background
Environment, and goals
Motivations, expectations, aspirations and
behaviours.
~ Personas bring the ‘user’ to life

36. Developing Personas & User Stories
~ Surveys
– Internal and external
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User interviews
On-site visits
Client workshops
Heatmaps

38. Example Customers
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39. Current Situation?
~ What product are you using?
~ What is your goal?
~ Other situations?

40. Current Situation? – continued
~ Who are you?
~ What is your
experience level?
~ What are the
physical/environmental
conditions
~ What content
consumption method
are you using?
What are you doing?
Where are you?
What did you do?
What version are you
using?
~ What language do you
prefer?
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41. User Stories
I’m an end user. How do I install the PrintJet2050
on Windows 8?
I’m a support technician. How do I troubleshoot a
PrintJet2050 that is not recognized on Windows 8?
I’m an end user at home. How do I install the
PrintJet2050 on Windows 8 without admin
privileges?

42. User Stories
I’m a service engineer onsite at St. Heliers Hospital
trying to repair an MRI scanner but can’t find the
answer I need in my iPad documentation. I’ve called
into a support technician to help.
What connection do they have?
What else can the support technician access?

43. Benefits of user stories
~ Identifies
– Metadata requirements
– Content requirements
– Reuse opportunities
~ Aligns team around a specific set of goals

44. Pitfalls
~ Take time and resource
~ TechComm often not given client access easily

46. Modularity
Original Flow
Does your content have the necessary agility?

47. Module Types
Just to get you started...
~ Concepts
~ Tasks
~ References
~ Glossaries

48. Benefits
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Reuse across deliverables
Focus on minimalism increases consumption
Easier to manage content for translation
Send only changed blocks for review
Clear guidelines about what should go in
certain types of module

49. Pitfalls
~ Writing for reuse is not easy
~ Writers must collaborate more
~ “Ownership” is changed

51. Taxonomy
~ Extend labelling systems for modules
– Document naming conventions
– Module naming conventions
– Keyword labels to improve SEO
~ Facetted search
~ Basis for content exchange with other
departments/system

52. Module Types
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53. Taxonomy

54. Facetted Search

55. Personas and Stories to Taxonomy
I’m a diabetic. What is the meaning of error code 7 on my OneTouch
blood glucose meter?
– Error codes
I’m a potential customer researching what GPS chipsets meet the XYZ
standard?
– Stages in product development or sales cycle
– Industry standards
– Technical specifications
I’m a developer. How do I retrieve a list of publications for the current
user using the web services API?
– API information types, methods & properties
I’m a subject matter expert reviewing a document. What content has
changed since the last released version?
– Version history
– Workflow status

56. Benefits
~ Speak with a common language
~ Increase quality of translations
~ Improve online search-ability

57. Pitfalls
~ Politically difficult to establish
~ Management often don’t “get it”

59. Metadata & Semantics
Metadata
~ Defined as – data about other data
~ Provides a way of further describing an object
Semantics
~ Gives meaning to content
<step>Press the <uicontrol>Print</uicontrol> button
<clause>The <act>Food Safety Act 1990</act> states that … </clause>
The basis for Adaptive Content

60. Adaptive Content
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61. Traditional Content
~ Traditional content is marked with
semantics on the document or block-level,
or sometimes not at all

62. Adaptive Content
~ Adaptive Content puts semantics on
the content itself. This enables
Contextually-Appropriate Experiences

63. IBM Model
~
Michael Priestly, IBM

64. Break down each user story …

65. … into to key information …

67. Semantic Content Modelling

68. Benefits
~ Content becomes free from constraints of static
outputs
~ Indexes!
– Dynamic delivery is all about the indexes you create
– Keywords, classifications, terms, product info,
audience, content types …
~ Relationships between indexes and from indexes
to taxonomies
– Using the indexed subjects for a topic, we could find
~ Related glossary terms
~ Related publications
~ Articles in a CRM

69. Pitfalls
~ Letting go of formatting is hard for some
authors
– Team roles become more specialised
~ Legacy migration needs careful consideration
~ Project scoping and roll-out is essential
~ Going without a CCMS is risky for larger or
complex projects

73. Content Applications
Web Apps
Mobile Apps
Web CMS
CRM
Interfaces
Content Delivery
REST API
Core Logic (JAVA)
Event &
Notifications
Core
User Management
Data Core
Indexing
Database
SQL
XML
File System
Geo

74. Content Applications
Web Apps
Mobile Apps
Web CMS
CRM
Interfaces
Content Delivery
REST API
Core Logic (JAVA)
Event &
Notifications
Core
User Management
Data Core
Indexing
Database
SQL
XML
File System
Geo

75. Content Applications
Web Apps
Mobile Apps
Web CMS
CRM
Interfaces
Content Delivery
REST API
Core Logic (JAVA)
Event &
Notifications
Core
User Management
Data Core
Indexing
Database
SQL
XML
File System
Geo

78. C# Class Libraries
XML Export
clsName, properties, miniHelp
XSLT
DITA Map & Topics

81. User
Authentication
dunnhum by
product
client
product, version
status, context?
language
request help
tesco- uk- olh
mekon- olh
tesco- uk
mekon
olh
doc- set
olh
doc- set
content
doc- set

83. Products
Shop
Report X
Report Y
Shelf Review
…
Solution Areas
Planning a promotion
…
Markets
US
UK

87. Benefits - The Right List is Addressed!
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Right content
Right format
Right language
Right time

88. Pitfalls
~ Waiting for delivery solutions
– Cost of home-grown solutions
~ No best practice in approach
~ Difficulty understanding the challenges
– Practical
– Financial
~ Organisational silos
~ Varying formats

89. Final Take-Aways
~ The customer doesn’t care about your org chart
– They just want their answer so they can get move on
~ We are responsible for the whole CX
~ Communication of knowledge is the focus, the
deliverables are a means to an end
– Focus on task-oriented content services and applications
– Your content exists to support their tasks