What are some better alternatives to help files?

Question

Does anyone have any piece of software that actually does a good job of help? I've seen some good ideas out there but by and large help files do not do "what it says on the tin" i.e. They just aren't "helpful."

Lets face it, help files are so 80s, does anyone read them? As software developers we know people don't read them, so we don't take pride in writing them. This lack of pride means they have become even more worthless and ... we are stuck in an endless cycle of bad help.

Here's a few of good ideas I've seen:

• I like the idea behind visual studio's dynamic help (multiple help topics for each context with less specific topics appearing further down the list)

• Ableton Live shows help in a small window while you are clicking around in the software and you keep noticing new useful things it says. Also has some training videos built in.

• Putting training videos on Youtube

But apart from that it's mainly just tat. (Yes even including clippy!!)

OK that's my rant over, the question is simply this...

-Does anyone out there have any good ideas for how to do help? -OR Has anyone seen any good examples of better help?

I'm trying to build a new way of doing help for the software we write at my company and I have some ideas but I'm eager to see what people are doing out there that works.

Thanks, Mike G

Answer 1

I do a couple of things for my software projects:

1. I write an actual manual (in Word, generally)
2. I make PowerPoints with lots of screenshot walkthroughs and examples (this works really well for people who won't read the manual).

I haven't written a help file in about 20 years.

For development, I use online resources like MSDN. I never use the help that is integrated with Visual Studio (I find it useless). I have seen other software writers put up online help, and I find that it is generally pretty good.

Abelton Live's help is awesome. But I wonder how much work it is to put together a help system that is that good.

Answer 2

I've more than once successfully used the help part of the applications.

• The help system part of Microsoft 2007 Office suite (Word, Excel, ...) and I'm also encouraging my co-workers to do so. The usually don't and ask me, who finds the answers that way. Thing is: they don't know how to formulate a question so that the help system finds the answers ...
• VMWare configurations: To be honest, I got better results consulting the context help within the dialogs then asking "google" or alike (which indicates I usually ask google first and try the apps later ...)

It didn't matter how the actual help system was integrated (within the app, company website), it just mattered how well it was organized and how understandable it is.

On the contrary, I've never found any help as part of the Windows OS to be useful at all. It's non-technical mumbo-jumbo is something I just don't get, looking for more technical, educated, answers.

Answer 3

The best way to avoid help files of any kind is to build software and/or hardware needing no help at all. Do you need help on iPhone?

Answer 4

If you have to write a help you have already failed in your program design. Have you ever seen a help menu on your iphone or on facebook? Millions of average Joe people use them every day without problem.

Help files/user manuals was required in the 80s when it was to complex to display proper guiding on the screen when you need it, even getting a volume-bar displayed on your tv was considered premium. It was simply technically infeasible to do anything else than "hold menu and function for 3 seconds to calibrate channels"

Now it's different, you've got millions of colorful pixels, standardized gui-widgets and high level code to play with. It is as easy to create a wizard as it is to write a help-page.

Ok, wizards might not be the most attractive solution always but you can still create easy menus and give information where it's needed, when it's needed. First run tutorials that show where to start looking is pretty good and after that the user usually finds their way by themselves. But this post is turning more into program design than help file design so i'll end here.

Edit: To add something constructive i just remembered this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/incremental-feature-search-in-applications.html