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Journals by EmailTech writers enjoy—in a schadenfreude-ish way—stories about problems that result from users’ confusion about using a product, especially when the problems are monumental. We love those examples because they typically illustrate how good user assistance would have saved the day.
Some examples aren’t so dramatic, such as one I ran across a couple of weeks ago. I was working in a test version of one of the software applications I work on. This environment has data copied regularly from the production version because of the complexity of the system, so as a result, we may see what the users have recently done (though the information is always a week or two out of date) while we’re doing our own work.
This system includes a feature called “custom fields.” Using this feature, users can add input boxes to certain screens to track information that’s not already set up to be tracked. This helps them meet the individual needs of the offices they work in. When adding a custom field, a user specifies a field label.
In this test environment for a particular office, when looking at the screen where custom fields are set up, I saw only one custom field had been created.
Its label?
“What is this?”
I almost laughed. The only explanation I could think of was that someone came across this screen and didn’t know what the purpose of custom fields is, so in a moment of sheer confusion and perhaps feeling a bit ironic, the person typed in “What is this?” as a field label, and then saved it.
This person knew enough to type something in and then click the Save button, so that was a start. But I wonder where the failure to empower the user occurred. Should there be a bit of explanatory text on the custom fields screen like there is on some other screens? Or should the person have clicked Help to find out what this mysterious feature is for?
I think that in this case, text in the interface is the answer. As technical writers, we can fall into the trap of thinking that software user assistance has to come in the form of some separate product, like training guides or help systems. But this particular screen has some real estate that we could have used to add some brief text that would let a novice know what the heck this feature is for.
I haven’t shown this custom field label to anyone on the team yet, and I’m making some assumptions about it anyway. But coming across this question in the interface brings to mind the idea of some person hunched in front of a computer screen, trying to understand the system and coming across one more thing that he doesn’t get. That’s an image that I should sketch up and pin to my cubicle wall to help me remember whom I’m crafting assistance for.
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