Summary: In Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, Anne Gentle offers tips for mashing up user-generated content with user assistance, including ways to bring Web 2.0 to user assistance, and vice-versa.
According to Gentle, here are just a few ways to bring Web 2.0 to our user assistance:
- “Have you already implemented an online help system with dynamic updates, or are you still tied to the software release schedule? As customers become accustomed to the immediacy of blog updates, they may increasingly expect frequent updates” (p. 39).
- “An example of a mashup that could be used in user assistance is a wikislice, which repurposes a part of a wiki as an ebook (PDF) or in an online help system” (p. 132).
- “Design your wiki with specific tags in mind for collection. Let wiki contributors know that articles tagged in a certain way will be incorporated into the online help” (p. 135).
- “Other ways to integrate user content into your user assistance include using screencasts created by users, searching Google for the most helpful troubleshooting articles related to your product and asking permission to repost those, and incorporating wiki articles with the author’s permission and proper licensing agreements in place” (p. 135).
- Encourage your users to leave feedback, via a simple link in an email address on each help page, so that readers can send e-mail to a centralized mailbox in the department (p. 136).
- “Comments and feedback systems can be incorporated into many online help outputs. Jive Software and JS-Kit are two such offerings” (p. 136).
And here are ways Gentle suggests we can bring our user assistance to Web 2.0:
- “Consider writing a blog yourself, from the viewpoint of dedicated technical writer, to increase awareness of your customers that you are a real person inside the company, working hard at providing accurate, relevant information” (p. 39).
- “Another recent trend is the use of blogs for describing new features in products, especially web applications” (p. 40).
- “A blog can work well for release notes. Give your product some “Google juice”…and generate buzz for new features by giving other bloggers a well-understood infrastructure to link to you and give your entries trackbacks” (p. 41). (Note: This approach works best, when you separate feature information from bug reporting.)
- “Enable your customers to subscribe to documentation changes, including release notes additions, through subscription-based notifications, via RSS” (p. 44).
- “For technical publications, wikis are an exciting new possibility for engaging the customer and getting the customer’s viewpoint on choices and tasks for concepts as well as scenarios for how they are using the product” (p. 47).
- “You could use microblog posts to offer a tip of the day, and link to an online help topic or support article each day.” (See Sarah Maddox’s post about using Twitter as a medium for release notes.) (p. 50).
- “If your technical publications role is closely aligned with the technical support department, and you think lots of your customers would appreciate a Twitter account to talk to, you might consider starting one with tips, tricks, and helpful information” (p. 53).
- “At sites such as Screencast.com and IgniteCAST, users can use a desktop tool to capture screenshots or screencasts, which are videos showing the computer screen that are often narrated with a voice script to explain what is happening on the screen. The related website hosts the image or video files for playback” (p. 138).
For these and other suggestions for blending user assistance with Web 2.0, make sure to check out Gentle’s book. I don’t think I’ve encountered such a balanced view of the future of documentation, applicable to both technical and nontechnical disciplines, so well researched and with such concrete tips, anywhere else on or about the social web.
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