One of my colleagues asked another about changing the icon in Flare that you can use to indicate new or updated topics. The answer: Change it in the output. I see people in the RoboHelp forums ask for a comparable feature too. But it probably doesn’t matter because how much do users care what’s new in a documentation set?

In this Web 2.0, connectedness-driven world, we acknowledge that to some extent, people seek out the most up-to-date information. If it was published in 2008, it’s ancient history. If it was published last month, it’s not as bad, but still not optimal.

In interviewing job candidates, I’ve seen portfolio samples with notes describing when the last update was and what the changes were. I can’t help but wonder how necessary that is. I’d say just include a “last updated” date and leave it at that. It’s interesting how many conventions in documentation are just that: holdovers from when everything was in print and people actually read.

The second colleague’s reason for not using the “new content” icons is that if users are accessing the help, they’re just getting in for a bit of info and getting back out. I agree. If they see a “last updated” date somewhere and it’s recent, that may reassure them back in the recesses of their subconscious. But for the task at hand, they want answers. The documentation itself is going to make clear whether it’s up to date or not—if it’s accurate, it’s up to date, regardless of the time stamp on it. Though a time stamp may help to instill some confidence.

I think an icon that says, “Hey, look at me! I’m new and updated content!” may distract users more than it helps. From what I understand, Flare’s icon is a topic with a star on it. There isn’t anything about it that readily suggests what the star means. So a user would have to go out of his way to mouse over it for a tooltip or whatever the mechanism is for discovering what it means. Most people probably aren’t going to take the time to do that.

Another thing that may subconsciously reassure users is making sure the documetation refers to the correct version of the product. If the product is in version 3.8.1, the documentation ought to indicate it’s for 3.8.1, or users may wonder how accurate it is.

I think time stamps and version numbers are probably sufficient to suggest accuracy and “up-to-dateness.” What do you think? Perhaps an interesting study would be to poll some users after they get into the documentation for a product; one set of users has a doc set with time stamps and version numbers, and the other has docs with none of these things, and in all other ways the exercise is the same. It would be interesting to see if there would be any difference in their perception of the documentation’s accuracy.

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