Usually the last system to be implemented, but many times the most important lifeline for the customer, is the software help system. Ideally, your software system is perfectly understandable and problem-free from lots of user testing and software iteration, but that’s usually not the case. Your customers may get frustrated and leave the site, and may even complain about their crappy experience to others. Providing your customers with effective Help is the last chance you have to turn a frustrating experience into a meaningful one. As a User Experience professional, what Help strategies should you consider? What content do you need? How do you find an appropriate Help Authoring Tool for your software product? There are many vendor systems out there that offer many features. What do you really need? Attendees will learn about help system considerations such as: how to connect the help system to your software, content management features, content strategy, localization, statistics, and more, which will assist you in finding a solution that helps your frustrated customers become happy customers.

1. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND
Considerations for choosing and implementing effective help systems
Elaine Meyer
User Experience Specialist, ProQuest

2. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Agenda
1. Introduction
2. Choosing the HAT
3. HAT Implementation
4. Planning for content
5. Designing Help access points
6. Is Help helpful?

3. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
1. Introduction

4. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
About Elaine
• User experience specialist at ProQuest
• 75% Help system implementing/writing and 25%
designing functionality for the new PQ platform
• SI ‘09 grad – LIS & HCI, MTU BSEE ‘01
• ‘05 – ’07: Application engineer - implemented a
vendor FAQ for manufacturing company
• www.uxlibrarian.com
• Twitter: @uxlibrarian
Introduction

5. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
What is a software Help system?
Introduction

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Online FAQ
• Online FAQ:
– Website supporting a
physical product
(example:
Overstock.com)
– A service oriented
business (like a library)
– An FAQ in addition to
the software Help
system (like ProQuest
KB)
Introduction

7. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
What is a HAT (Help AuthoringTool)?
Introduction

8. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Scenario
• Guess who just got a big
assignment?YOU!
• You need to chose and
implement a software Help
system for the online software
currently being developed by
your organization.
• What do you do now?
Introduction

9. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
2. Choosing the HAT

10. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
User needs
Do your users need additional
information that cannot be readily
found in your UI?
What might users want/need from your
help system?
Personas – Revisit your personas with a
Help system lens.
Choosing the HAT

11. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Company requirements
Take some time and figure out what
features you want and prioritize them.
For example:
– Online HAT or installed?
– Subversion integration
– Language support?
– Contextual help?
– Browse & search
– Cross links
– Usage statistics
– Social media options
Choosing the HAT

12. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
CMS features
Choosing the HAT
Output Features
• Table of contents
• Glossary
• Linking
• Search
• Index
• Breadcrumbs
• Multiple projects
• Community features
HAT features
• Online HAT or installed?
• Localization
•Contextual help
•Usage statistics
•Subversion integration
•Customize help system
•Accessibility analyzer
•Content snippets
•Mobile Help
•Indexing content
•Multiple Help systems within 1
project (share content)
•Multiple projects share the
same template

13. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Current resources
• You
– Time available
– Writing skills
– Technology comfort level
– Prior experience
• Help team
– Colleagues with prior Help
authoring and implementation
experience?
• Company IT
• Development team
Choosing the HAT

14. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
DIY or vendor?
Choosing the HAT
Budget – ????
Software developer resources
– Development capacity to build
in-house?
Timeline
– 1 month?
– A few months?
– 6 months?

15. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
A vendor system it is!
Choosing the HAT

16. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Vendor technical support
• Chat
• Email
• Phone
• Other
– Vendor website stocked with
helpful info
– Product demos
– Online FAQ
– Social media channels for support
Choosing the HAT
How much technical support do you need?

17. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
List of common HATVendors
Adobe RoboHelp: http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp.html
HelpStudio:
http://www.innovasys.com/products/hs2011/overview.aspx?r=1
MadCap Flare:
http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/overview.aspx#wha
tsnew
Author-it: http://www.author-it.com/
Bigger list from wikipedia:
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_help_authoring_tools
Choosing the HAT

18. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
To-do list
• Define your user and company needs.
• Consider your resources.
• Research Help AuthoringTools (HATs)
• Contact vendors, get sales demos
• Test drive demo version if interested
• Get quotes
• Make a decision!
• Get approval, buy HAT
Choosing the HAT

19. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
3. HAT Implementation

20. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Install & setup HAT
• Install HAT for primary implementation
person
• Watch training videos
• Vendor product is straight “out of the box”.
• Remove unwanted functionality
– Index
– Community features
– Icons
• Connect to statistics software if not included
HAT Implementation

21. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Customize HAT
• Work with visual design department (if
available)
• Customize CSS to match software
– Text color, size, font
• Design and replace existing icons if necessary
• Add footer / copyright
• Change header/footer colors
HAT Implementation

22. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Building Help system
• Work with app team to get test content
published online in company repository
• Help content can then be linked to the
software application when it’s ready.
• 1 layer of SVN
HAT Implementation

23. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Versioning system (SVN)
Multiple people working on the HAT at the
same time?
• Check in/check out help topics
– Won’t overwrite anyone else’s work
• Save everyone’s work
• Integrate with your organization’s SVN
system (might need middleware software)
• If other authors implementing, get them
going on training
HAT Implementation

24. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
4. Planning for content

25. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Content strategy
What type of info goes where?
• Main UI
– Instructional text to perform tasks
– Supporting information for databases, i.e. ‘about’.
– Limited marketing text
• Help system
– Information directly related to your experience IN the
software
– More in depth information about functionality
– Search syntax for more advanced searchers
• FAQ
– Technical information
Planning for content

26. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Content estimate
• Approximate word count
– How many web pages that need additional help text?
– Help estimate translation costs
• Versions
– Different versions of the software targeting to
different audiences (for instance academic and
professional markets)?
– Can you reuse some text for those different versions?
• Releases
– Do you expect many software releases that require
additional content over time?
Planning for content

27. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Base content & initialToC
• What content do you absolutely need for your
first release?
– Main functionality: Search tips, Basic search,
advanced search, etc
• What content can wait until later?
• Table of Contents –
– Through knowing base content, and having an
idea of future content, design your table of
contents.
Planning for content

28. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Help style guide & visual design
• Tone, punctuation, spelling, etc
– Example: Use American spelling
– Example: Friendly or formal tone?
– Example: How technical is your audience?
• Guidelines for text
– Example: Never use all caps
• Preferred words:
– Examples: PDF vs .pdf, email vs e-mail
• Cueing conventions
– Example: bold for search terms & button names
• Localization considerations
– “Never use a ten dollar word when a ten cent one will do.”
• Styling for graphics, tables, H1,H2, H3, custom icons & colors
Planning for content

29. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Help request system
Planning for future content
• Do you expect several releases of your software?
Are you using agile?
• As new functionality is added, requests are put in
for supporting information in the Help system.
• Designers enter in requests.
• All Help text should trace back to Help requests.
• Help requests are written/implemented right
before the end of the release.
Planning for content

30. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Localizing content
• Localization vs. translation?
• On-the-fly translation vs. human translation?
• Localization features
– Supporting independent multi-languages of the
help system (publish them separately)
– Compare two languages side-by-side
– UTF-8 compliance
– Supporting right-to-left languages (Arabic)
• Localization scheduling
Planning for content

31. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Help audits
• An audit for every release
• All help content checked against the software
– Planned functionality might not have made it
– Help request was never put it
• Holistic view of entire system
– Since Help content is layered in piece by piece,
nice to take a step back
Planning for content

32. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
5. Designing Help access points

33. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
• It’s there when you need it
• In context
• Supporting the main functionality
• Extra information that can’t fit on the page
Designing Help access points

34. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Help question mark
Designing Help access points

35. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Footer links
Designing Help access points

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Marketing text
Designing Help access points

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Right where you need it
Designing Help access points

38. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
‘Learn more’ link
Designing Help access points

39. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Side panel
Designing Help access points

40. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Designing Help access points
What other types of Help access
points have you used or seen?

41. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
6. Is Help working?
• Statistics
• User testing

42. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Statistics
• Statistics package included with your
Help system?
• Statistic
– Topic hits
• Are people using help?
• Areas of software that don’t make sense?
– Search terms
• Content gaps?
• Synonyms?
– Localization: Is it worth translating?
Is Help working?

43. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
User testing
• Create scenarios
– How do you find out the operator
precedence?
– How would you use “LNK”?
• On demand Help
– watch and see when people use Help
on their own
Is Help working?

44. Good Help is Hard to Find Elaine Meyer @uxlibrarian
Thank you!
Now you know more than you ever wanted to
know about Help systems. Congratulations!
Questions?