Thursday, December 11, 2008

Where is Help 2.0?

I empathize with the ambivalence Tom Johnson feels when completing a help system/manual. Since no one is every satisfied with "the manual" these days, it makes the technical writing job that much less fulfilling.

He references Alan Porter's fascinating Move over DITA – Chaos Is Coming! article, where he realizes just how out of date the current help paradigm is by observing his daughter research for a school paper. The money quote:

"In fact for most of my working life to date, the technology I used at work far out paced that I used outside of work.

But not any more."

It's a sad truth, and one that will mean more painful discrepancies between user's help expectations and companies delivery methods until it can be resolved.

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