Do you ever have an experience that wakes you up and makes you wonder if you’re doing a good enough job?

I had to use a financial Web application today to take care of expenses for the trip to Philadelphia for the STC conference. It was completely unintuitive. I looked at the PDF manual to which there was a link right off the main page. It seemed like pretty high-level stuff. I blundered a little more before clicking “Help.” Just maybe there was some guidance there.

BZZZZT! Wrong answer.

After browsing the table of contents, I turned right off. The list consisted of noun phrases that told me nothing. I wanted to know how to go about a certain task, and there was no clue in the table of contents about where to find that information. What was worse: No search or index. Just a lonely little “Contents” tab.

I found myself thinking the word “unbelievable.” And then I closed the help.

And then I asked Tom for help because he went through this process after going to DocTrain West.

This made me think about one of the applications I’m documenting right now. It has a financial component to it, and it’s not going to be intuitive to anyone but CPAs. The interaction designers have done a good job of making things fairly simple, but I can see someone just like me—who didn’t follow his dad’s advice to take an accounting class in college—trying to use the finance functionality and not having a clue.

I have to remember the child’s taunt: When I point at someone else, most of the remaining fingers are pointing back at myself. How usable and accessible is the content I’m providing? How well am I helping this poor Joe accomplish what he needs to do and understand the system without having to explain the ins and outs of accounting? It’s a point to ponder.