Interesting NY Times article on “Death by PowerPoint

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

I typically create a Training & Support site collection and have a document library with 1-2 page “How-Tos”, an FAQ along with a link to submit a suggestion for a FAQ or to ask a question, another document library that uses HTML pages that call embeddedmedia player to play the videos.

I use subsites of the Training & Support site for one-on-one and classroom training and exercises.

I do use the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 training that you can install on the server or on your desktop.It’s more than most folks need but with a little tweaking can be a great benefit to have and it can save you some time developing your own videos if you decide the MS stuff is worth using.

I also have a “playground” or sandbox for my really interested users to play in. I’ll give them their own site on the server and make them a site admin and turn them loose. They do have some guidelines they have to follow but I give them pretty much free reign.

Thought about wikis and didn’t want to use them in our environment (C-level exec decision)

The wikis could then also contain links to training videos stored in a video library for visual learners.

If you could find a program that would allow you to create some sort of try it yourself where the users could see if they truely understood how to do by try it in virtual enviroment you could create for the kinesthetic learners. You could add links to that to the wiki as well.

Maybe a discussion board for the community of users, where users could post questions about some of those out of the norm situations and other users could share their solutions. After the solution was found you could maybe have certain power users that could have permissions to create a new wiki document and keep elvolving your documentation.

Just sort of thinking out loud here.

Trudy

In order for your product documentation to be effective as a training or instructional tool (as I assume we are discussing here as that seems to be where the responses are gravitating to) you have to include other mediums to get your message out to the people that need it (your end users).

It’s key to remember that everybody learns differently and while some might be able to get by just fine by reading a document that lays out a process or procedure in a step-by-step format (read-write learners) there are going to be just as many (and likely more) folks that have to “see” the process completed visually (visual learners) in order to grasp the concept. It’s very likely that even more have to actually walk through the process or procedure themselves to grasp the concept (kinesthetic learners) .

That being said I am a firm believer that any kind of product documentation that is intended to be used as a training/instructional/informative tool should not only leverage documents but should also include videos (Camtasia does a great job and is my tool of choice), one-on-one or classroom training and remote (webex, go to meeting, Live Meeting etc….) training of some kind.

The key is to make sure that you reach all the levels of skill and expertise in the organization you support without talking down to them or talking over their heads. It’s a VERY narrow target and can be incredibly difficult to hit accurately without a lot of trial and error.

Oh yeah…..don’t forget that you have to reel in those folks that are resistant to change, they change your dynamic quite a bit and you really have to adjust your documentation to show them the benefit of performing a task or procedure in the manner you are describing as well as showing them how to actually do it. This group will be the one group that you definitely need to plan on using face time and actually letting them walk through the process or procedure so they can see the benefits of what you’re trying to get them to do.

Since smart toddlers are very good at firing off multiple questions in quick succession all while finding ANY and EVERY loop hole in the instructions given, these mothers have learned to give instructions that anticipate all those questions and stall tactics.

So they end up sounding something like this. . .”Go up the staris, and down the hall. Do not stop in your brothers room, pet the dog, or poke your sister. Go into the bathroom and stand in front of the sink. Do not turn the water on, play with the tooth brushes, or drop your hot wheels car in the toilet. . .”

I have so totally been there, and said that!

But seriously, It is sometimes easier to write instructions for someone who doesn’t have as much experience or knowledge because they just follow the instructions given to them. The more knowledgable users are like those very smart toddlers finding the hole in every instruction given. In some ways you have to accept that there will always be that user who will find the one thing you didn’t anticipate. In those cases I update the manual as best I can, and move on. Instruction manuals are always a work in progress.

Trudy

1. Get Your Backpack and Jacket.

Seems simple but a technical or knowledgeable person might be tempted to change it or potentially over think it:
1. Get Your Backpack and Jacket.
Exception: If You did not bring a backpack or jacket move on to step 2.
Mock Questions: What if they brought an umbrella? What if they brought a coat? Is that the same as a Jacket? What if they brought multiple backpacks or share a backpack with another classmate such as a sibling? For Step 2 – What if your lunchbox is already in your backpack? etc

The problem people, organizations, and technology faces is that we try and be complete in documentation. The reality for most user driven documentation is that you must accept it WILL NOT BE complete. Instead it will focus and outline the most important steps only etc.

Thoughts?

Our user base runs the gamut from very tech-savvy to near-Luddite so it gets difficult to know how far I have to go in terms of spoon-feeding; we also have most users running Office 2003 while a portion runs Office 2007 and some on Office 10. A uniform level of skill plus a uniform platform would help immensely. I often must write 3 versions of the same thing.