A little while back, Michael emailed me an invitation to look at some findings from a study about online experience. I haven’t had a chance to check out the full document yet, but the executive summary contains quite a bit of information. I’ll consider here how some of the findings affect technical documentation.

Easy Access to Complete Information

One point made in the findings is that users’ “enjoyment” of a site is tied closely to how easily they can find the information they want and stay oriented at the same time. I think this is a given for technical communicators; we know that users want to get answers as fast as possible, and documentation must be navigable. Those two factors are easier to pin down than a third: “complete information.”

What constitutes completeness? As a whole, technical communicators don’t agree on this. By its strict definition, completeness would mean providing everything. And I think most of us can agree that we don’t want to give users everything. Otherwise, we overload users, and too much information takes away from ease of navigation. But how much is too much is a discussion for another time.

Up-to-Date Information Is More Important than Good Design

Just yesterday, a feedback email came through one of the applications I work on. The user said that she was using the help system to learn the application, and in one of the how-to topics, a link was named using old text. The link text had been changed some time ago, and I failed to update at least that help topic accordingly. As a result, this user was confused. So I wrote back with the correction and a promise to update the help text.

Yes, up-to-date information is extremely important. I get frustrated when I have to figure out how to really do something while working with outdated instructions. Just last month, PayPal sent my wife an email with instructions about verifying her email address (figure that one out…), and the link that she was supposed to use wasn’t actually present on the site! Again, she had to figure it out.

According to this study, designers place more importance on good design than do users, while users do the opposite. I have to side with the users on this one. Outdated information alienates and frustrates users, and no amount of “good design” can make up for that. Would you say to yourself: “I want to kick my computer because the information on this site is so wrong!… But the site looks nice, so it’s not a problem.” If you believe good design is better than up-to-date information, maybe you’d better stick with a cool, soothing color scheme.

Users Like a Broad Range of Information

Part of this finding is that links to related or recommended information are helpful to users. Even when they want to find a certain piece of information, users may be interested in a link or reference to another topic that will give more explanation. This suggests that we not provide the absolute minimum content we can get away with, but that we instead chunk it and link among those chunks so users can see what is related and relevant and decide for themselves whether they want to get more information.

However, another finding suggested that when users can’t find the information they want, they assume it’s not there, so they think the information is incomplete, when the real problem is that the information wasn’t fully searchable or easily navigable.

Designers Overestimate Site Effectiveness

Overall, the study found that designers tend to think their designs are more effective, easily navigable, and usable than the users do. This highlights the need for some usability testing before full releases. Whenever we design and write content with unfounded assumptions about our users, we’re making a mistake, one that could end up being costly.

The interaction design and technical communication fields overlap, so there is much we can learn from what users say makes a good site. I think many of these are already part of what we consider good technical communication: usability, clarity, and accuracy.