Lothar Scholz
12/12/2017 11:05 am
Writing documentation for software is a bit of a demoralizing task, as
you know the vast majority of people will never read it.
Write API documentation, that is where people can't get enough of it.
In fact, I have plenty of empirical evidence that show that people will
not even read a one line error message (that tells them exactly what the
problem is and how to fix it!). I'm sure that doesn't apply to readers
of this forum though. ;0)
But on the other hand they will watch a 45min youtube video for learning
something they could read in 5 min.
I think the problem in the past was that documentation was very very
bad written and not fit a lot of people. If you explain in length how to move
your mouse to click some button you lost have documentation that is soon
out of date and pissed of everyone who is a little bit more experienced.
And now the later is the majority.
Dont explain menu items, explain concepts and mental models of how
data is managed and handled. People can find out how to add something
if there is a [+] button. The need to describe this level is a total failure in UX.
