Journals by RSS
Journals by EmailIn one application I work on, I recently added some text to the context-sensitive help topic for a screen that allows financial secretaries to make a payment. The text described what to do with a particular control that had been added to the screen.
Because of the many variables involved in making a payment in various countries around the world, this screen has become functionally dense, leading to a help topic that I finally decided had become cumbersome. The bulk of it was a procedure for filling out the information, but in between steps was a lot of “if you need to do X, enter Y” and such things. Some of those extra explanations were only a couple of extra sentences, but added together, it was a lot of content being spewed at the user.
This is a Web application, so we don’t have field-level help. The growth of this help topic led me to imagine that if a user clicked Help for information about one particular field and had to slog through the text in that topic, they wouldn’t get very far before giving up. That much information punching you in the face would be enough discouragement without even beginning to scan it.
I needed a different approach.
After some deliberation, the thought came to me to try two levels of dropdown hotspots. This screen is divided in sections, so I rearranged the information so that I had a hotspot corresponding to each section. Each hotspot would expose another set of hotspots and any other information about that section in general. This would allow the user to navigate directly to what they want rather than having to scan and scroll through a bunch of text.
I talked to an interaction designer and also demonstrated this idea to the user education team. I received some good feedback, and they were generally in favor of this idea.
The next problem was that in this help system, I have provided a screenshot at the top of each context-sensitive topic. The original reasons for doing this have changed, and the main purpose now is usually to show examples of what the user may see or do on the screen. But even visually condensed text can be pushed out of sight by the screenshot, so I hadn’t won much. So I decided to try putting the screenshot inside a hotspot and allow the user to choose to see it if he or she wants an example rather than having to see it every time. Generally, they already know what screen they’re on anyway.
Next, I explained the concept to the product manager (I run major changes past him because he wrote the help for the application we’re replacing). He said, “That sounds great, and I think people your age will have no problem with it. But I’m concerned about some of the older folks who would have to use it.”
Now, our users consist of two main age demographics: People about 20 and people in their 50s or older. The project team has tried to be aware of the potential gap in familiarity with computers and Web applications.
What the product manager suggested next was music to my ears: “It would be nice to get it in front of some of them and have them try it.” After I demonstrated this new topic structure to him, he was even more in favor of trying it with some of our users. He is setting up a couple of on-site visits for me in our area so I can see how our users navigate in this kind of topic structure.
In any case, using this method makes the information look much less intimidating when the topic opens. I’m trading scrolling for mouse clicks, but I think clicking is the better of the two. The problem I have to contend with is how to provide a control to expand all hotspots, or at least for a print control to print all hotspot contents. I’m using RoboHelp 7.02 to maintain this help system, and I haven’t been able to locate something that would quickly integrate with RH7′s hotspot scripts to expand everything at once. And I’m not a JavaScript whiz. (If you have such a script or know where I can get one, please let me know! What I found on
So we’ll see how the usability testing goes and whether I can find a way to expand all hotspots. (Come to think of it, I think all a “collapse all” control would have to be is a link to “#,” just refreshing the page.) But having the topic open with screenshot and control details within dropdown hotspots makes the topic look a lot less daunting when it opens. I plan to implement this across the longer context-sensitive topics.
Related entries (auto-generated):
Findings from an Online Help Usability Test
A Shift in My Context-Sensitive Help Approach
Forget the Scry: Find out Why Users Access Help
4 Comments to 'Dropdown Hotspots: A Solution for Cumbersome Help Topics'
December 30, 2009
Ben
It’s a good job distance and age separate me from your Product Manager or I might be knocking on his door!
Concerned about the older folks is he? Just ask him to step back and remember which generation invented the computer! It’s a bit like sex, every generation seems to think they invented it thereby missing the obvious. I hate to be the one to break the news to him but his parents knew something about it before he did.
Step back fifteen years. I worked for a bank and computing was still mostly mainframe there but we were planning rollout of Windows (3.1!) to provide relationship management software for managers dealing with high net worth customers. IT were insistent we had to continue using the old mainframe shortcut keys because the older managers would not adapt to this new Windows stuff. I was insistent the old stuff was unintuitive and they would find Windows easier. There as a bit of an impasse so I called a meeting of a mixed age group of these managers and asked IT to attend. I demonstrated what the new system would look like using a Powerpoint mockup of the proposed system. About two minutes in, one of the managers asked what Windows was. It was like a prayer being answered. I explained this would be demonstrated and at the end I would ask him first what he thought of it. For the benefit of your Product Manager, let me emphasise this was a person who really did not know what Windows was about, absolutely no idea.
At the end I asked this guy first but everyone said the same. “Give us the Windows way of working, it’s obvious, not like the stuff IT give us.” I could not supress the smile. In fairness to IT, they accepted the point and we moved on.
Age has little to do with it, it is about attitude. I can run rings around some people half my age or younger because I decided this was something for me. There are other things where they can run rings around me because I am not interested in those things. By using your product, the older users have demonstrated they can use a PC and as long as your product follows normal conventions, I am sure your tests will reinforce what I have described. Focus on common sense design and age will be irrelevant.
It’s easy to confuse the fact that sometimes older people to take a little longer to make a decision with being down to their age rather than being because experience has taught them not to rush in.
Most folks over fifty a not gaga!
[Reply]
December 30, 2009
Ouch! So now I find I’m lumped in with others that are viewed as being stodgy, unadaptable, one foot in the grave and the other on a pat of butter just because I’m a year or so past the half century mark/
I agree with all points my fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter made.
(Begin creaky voice)Now, GET OFF MY GRASS! – (muttering)dadgum whipper snapper…
[Reply]
January 4, 2010
Whew, I’d better respond here.
You may be interested to know that the product manager isn’t a dadgum whippersnapper. He’s in the group that he was concerned about—certainly over the age of 50 himself. I see your point though, and I’ve read that older folks are picking up things like Twitter pretty rapidly.
So even if there were some assumptions about the age group we were talking about, it made a good reason for conducting some usability testing. Results were generally consistent, but just as in any other group, some participants were quicker to grasp what was going on than others.
[Reply]
January 5, 2010
Thanks Ben. We were of course over egging it a bit but the findings were real and you have found the same; it’s more about attitude. It’s always right to perform usability tests rather than relying on the findings of others, something could render them invalid for your software. It is also right that findings based on age are analysed as long as age is just one of a number of groups.
Thanks for telling us the outcome.
[Reply]
Set Me Straight. Leave a Comment.