-------- 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]> ------------------ 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 0 Voicemail: 310.471.1766 Email: [log in to unmask] Oo "There is always hope." My health site: http://www.yana.org/hetrick Site of the month: http://www.washington.edu/cambots/camera1_l.gif