-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Question about assistance with topo CDs
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:14:41 -0700
From: Dr. Virginia R. Hetrick <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>
References: <[log in to unmask]>
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Hi, Katie -
First, I'm a strong proponent of do-it-yourself. In this case, it means
giving the client the tools necessary to do whatever it is that they
need to do, including a little instruction/training. But, I also
realize that a lot of places may not have the personnel in place to do
that and clients may have a preference for going at their own speed.
When I'm teaching, I find I often have to give instructions several
times because not all students grasp the concept, let alone the specific
instructions, at the speed of other students. Additionally, different
people learn in different ways. For example, when I'm teaching a mathy
topic, I do it once with words, once with symbols, and once with
graphics. That said, ...
One thing that we've been pretty successful with, albeit in another
context, is having students develop documentation for users as senior
projects or term projects. I've had two groups of students develop
documentation for programs that is less detailed than the "official"
documentation that comes with the software. They're called TellHows and
the emphasis is on the How to Do It of things.
The main reason we got started doing this is that people who are not
familiar with a program are often intimidated by the sheer volume of
things you can do in various software packages. We have lots of
students who come from families where they have not had any access to
computers (or even keyboards of any type) which makes things even more
intimidating. (For these folks, we even have a small TellHow to
familiarize them with the terminology.)
All of the TellHows make the assumption that people can navigate around
in Windows and that they know the difference between a window, a tab, a
pane, a dropdown, etc. Then, the documentation is tabbed along the
right margin in a browser so that all the documentation is available in
a single place and so that only the right side of the browser window
needs to be exposed, i.e., you can get access to all the "chunks" of
documentation in a very slender area on the very right side of the
computer screen so that you don't give up lots of real estate to be able
to have easy access to the TellHow.
There is a VERY short description (about twelve lines plus a list of all
the pages (hotlinked) on the front page of each TellHow. So, for
example, the major functionality for your TellHows could be Opening and
Navigating, Zooming a Map, Saving a Map, Printing a Map (including any
custom adjustments to the printer), MAYBE Creating a Custom Map, etc.
You might get together a team of a couple geography students, a
computer science student, and a good writer (I think CU has a technical
writing program which could be an appropriate source) to do the
documentation as a term project, obviously with the cooperation of the
appropriate professors or as a senior project.
The emphasis of the TellHows is on the most common, most repetitive
tasks. For example, in the MS Word documentation, we don't have all of
the topics under Insert. We have Break and Picture. In the next
version, we're going to include Field and Symbol as well. We will not
have Hyperlink because students are WAY discouraged from using Word to
create web pages (we are, after all, teaching them various web-oriented
languages as part of their degree programs, so we don't want the
temptation to be there!). The instructions are very succinct, such as,
Click this, Right click that, etc.
It is hugely important that the students NOT copy the instructions out
of the software's documentation or online helps. It is likewise hugely
important that the language used be professional and not slangy.
Frequently, I suggest the students use the imperative voice in the
instructions so that the writers not go freaky over use of "you" which
they seem to regard as a sin (since imperative voice is a varient of
second person, I don't understand why, but anyhow...).
Finally, we make sure that they include screenshots in case the
instructions get a little complex. We encourage the students to make
annotations to the screenshots, primarily by putting labels in burgundy
or dark gold on the screenshots. The choice of burgundy and dark gold
is to use the school colors. This also avoids the choice of blue which
is pretty much many vendors' idea of color -- not many vendors have
burgundy and/or dark gold -- and to give some semblance of design and
connectedness to the various TellHows.
HTH.
virginia
--
\ / Virginia R. Hetrick, here in sunny California
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