Document the Experience
When describing how to write documentation in ScreenSteps Greg and I often tell people to create task-based lessons. You think of a task that the user needs to accomplish and you show them how to do it. I’ve been thinking about this lately and while accurate, I don’t think this description fully communicates how ScreenSteps should be used.
So here is another stab at it- Document the experience.
People should use ScreenSteps to create documentation centered around the experiences the user will have with the software. Imagine different scenarios that the user will find themselves in. What questions will they have? What will they want to do?
When you sit down to write documentation consider the following:
- What questions will the user ask the first time they launch the software?
- What tasks will the user want to accomplish with the software?
- What questions will the user ask the first time they use a particular feature?
If you begin your documentation with a list of questions that a user might ask then you can sit down and create lessons that respond to those questions. What ends up happening is that you write documentation that is really useful to the user because you are showing them how to get something done.
In addition, if you are a software developer you will find that by using this approach your application will go through a refining process. As you ask questions and document the software step-by-step you will find things that don’t quite work as they should or a workflow that could be improved.
