Ch3

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Ch3 Usibility During the Planning Stages

• Melek OKTAY
• (Ceng-bilm 403)

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Outline

• Usibility and Technical Information
• Usibility During the Planning Stages
• Usibility During the Writing and Designing
  Process
• Writing and Organizing Information for Usability
• Proofreading Your Final Draft

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Usibility and Technical Information

• Usibility and Technical Information
• Usibility During the Planning Stages
• Usibility During the Writing and Designing
  Process
• Writing and Organizing Information for Usability
• Proofreading Your Final Draft

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Usibility and Technical Information

• When you plan,write, and design a piece of
  communication
• Brochure, manual, online help screen, or report ?
  you are creating a communication product.
• Like any other product, people will use it only
  if they can find what they need, understand the
  language, follow the instructions, nd read the
  graphics.
• In other words, communication products must be
  usable.
• Usability means that people who use the product
  can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their
  tasks

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Usibility During the Planning Stages

• Usibility and Technical Information
• Usibility During the Planning Stages
• Usibility During the Writing and Designing
  Process
• Writing and Organizing Information for Usability
• Proofreading Your Final Draft

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Usibility During the Planning Stages

• Before you begin writing or designing any
  information product, learn all you can about your
  audiance and intended use of your document.
• Perform task analysis
• Ultimately, your document will be more useful if
  you know what your audiance wants to do with it.
• Develop an Information Plan
• Once you have a clear picture of the audiance and
  purpose for your document, as well as the
  intended user tasks, you can draft an information
  plan
• Outline of the assumptions
• Goals
• Budged for your document

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Usibility During the Planning Stages(cont.)

• Information plans can be as short as a two-to
  three-page memo or as long as a five-to ten-page
  report, depending on your project.
• Do the Research
• Developing an information plan might require
  research

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Usibility During the Writing and Designing Process

• Usibility and Technical Information
• Usibility During the Planning Stages
• Usibility During the Writing and Designing
  Process
• Writing and Organizing Information for Usability
• Proofreading Your Final Draft

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Usibility During the Writing and Designing Process

• Revise Your Plan and Your project
• Once you have completed these first steps, you
  can write, design, and test your document.
• If your audience finds a technical term difficult
  to understand, define it clearly or use a
  simpler word or concept.
• Create Documentation That Is Context-Sensitive
• A useful way to think about providing
  documentation for your audience is to consider
  documentation context-sensitive.
• Context-sensitive documentation is usually
  embedded within the software itself and addresses
  the specific tasks that users want to complete
• Many online help systems today are
  context-sensitive, providing audiences with more
  closely focues help that pertains to their
  immediate user needs.

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Usibility During the Writing and Designing Process

• Usibility and Technical Information
• Usibility During the Planning Stages
• Usibility During the Writing and Designing
  Process
• Writing and Organizing Information for Usability
• Proofreading Your Final Draft

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Writing and Organizing Information for Usability

• You can dramatically increase the usability of
  any communication by focusing on three aspects of
  writing
• First use good grammar and style.
• Readers can not extract what they need from
  poorly written information
• Moreover, bad writing makes you look (and your
  company) imcompetent (yetersiz)
• Second create an overview to give your audiance
  a framework for navigating the document.
• Third chunk your information into units that
  make sense for the specific audience and purpose