1. Peggy Harvey ENG 675 April 20, 2010

2.  Background  Problem  Initial Concerns  Decisions and Challenges  Result  What’s Next

3.  Logical Progression is a start-up company that provides tablet-based software solutions  Logical Ink is an electronic charting solution for healthcare

4.  Provide documentation for the new version of Logical Ink Server  Prior versions were configured by Logical Progression staff  New version is a Web portal intended to give end users access to the server backend  Help system integrated into product more likely to be used by audience

5.  I’m not a Logical Progression employee.  I’m not regularly on site.  Disconnect between the Logical Ink Server development schedule and my ENG 675 deadlines.

6.  Chris was very supportive of my project and wanted me to succeed.  Chris provided information whenever I needed it.  For ENG 675, I developed the Help system completely from the product specification.

7.  Type of Help system?  Level of quality?  Design elements?  Navigation elements?  Content to include or exclude?

8.  Help system: HTML Help  Quality: Basic, version 1.0 (ENG 518)  Design: Simple (ENG 517, ENG 508)  Navigation: Cross-references, hyperlinks, index

9.  Focus on what users need (ENG 512)  Usable, useful content (ENG 508)  Task-centered, minimalist approach based on user scenarios (ENG 518)  Effective information architecture (ENG 518)  Consistency to accommodate non- linear format

10.  How much contextual information do users need?  What level of detail should be included?  What kind of information are users looking for?

11.  Creating a Help system requires authoring tools  Incorporate best practices  Wanted to use a long-term, maintainable process

12.  Effectively building a tech comm department on my own  Had to develop the entire documentation process from the ground up

13.  XML architecture  “Chunks” information into individual topics  Single-sourcing  Reuse  Human-readable files

14.  DITA is complicated and very difficult to learn on your own  Didn’t know where to start  Tried to learn Structured FrameMaker interface at same time  Eventually ran out of time

15.  After DITA failed, still had learning curve with backup solution  Needed to re-teach myself FrameMaker  Dealt with technological issues as they came

16.  Working, functional Help system based on the product specification  Lack of user data means Help system 1.0 is in effect a test system

17.  Match Help system to the actual product  Add context-sensitive hooks  Usability testing on product and documentation  Hand-off of source files to Logical Progression