To:
Robin Medeiros, Director of Communications
From: Steven J. Joles, Team Lead
Date: 07/12/2002
Re: Document Usability
We as a company are again running into an issue
concerning our documentation. The usability of our documentation is
suffering because we have no way of testing implemented at this time. |
| Findings |
|
- Our documents are not being tested
at all before they go out to market.
- Information is difficult to locate
in our documents.
- Instructions we send out are not
easy to follow.
- It is often difficult to even tell
what tasks you are suppose to be doing.
- Our on-line documents are very
easy to get "lost" in.
|
| Conclusions |
|
- Without proper testing our
documents will open us to unnecessary litigation and adverse
publicity.
- Not being able to easily find the
information is the same as not sending it at all, the documents will
not be used if you can’t locate information easily.
- Instructions have to be set up in
steps to be useful for assembling items.
- The documents and especially the
instructions need to be very clear and concise.
- The online documentation needs to
be organized better.
|
| Recommendations |
|
| Before our
documents go out for use by the general public we should be sure it gets
tested more thoroughly than it does now. |
- Have our technical writers form a committee to go
over all documents before they get published.
- We need to have thoroughly defined criteria for
usability.
- Have a beta test group review our documents
before final release.
- Refine our instructions into checklists so
nothing can be omitted.
- Rework our web site documents into a hierarchical
structure for ease of navigation.
|
