Crafting User-Centered Documentation: Lessons from Usability Studies
How usability evaluation methods inform technical writers, enhance software documentation, and help meet user needs
[TLDR] A recent study, "Listen to Your Users: The Effect of Usability Evaluation on Software Development Practice," by Marta Kristín Lárusdóttir, an Associate Professor at Reykjavik University, provides insights of value to tech writers into the impacts of usability evaluation methods on software development.
Software has slithered into every corner of our lives, quietly elbowing its way into our shopping carts, Netflix queues, and even the spreadsheets where Karen from accounting secretly plots world 🌍 domination.
It’s the invisible concierge of modern existence, fetching cat memes while scheduling your root canal. Try to avoid it, and you’ll find yourself in a standoff with a self-checkout machine that seems to know your darkest secrets but still insists you didn’t bag the kale.
Widespread reliance on software apps makes usability critical. Tech writers are essential in creating clear, user-friendly documentation that reduces frustration and enhances usability satisfaction with software products.
What Is Usability?
"The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use."
Source: International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9241-11, Ergonomics of human-system interaction—Part 11, Guidance on usability
Why Evaluating Usability Matters
Usability evaluation is like watching someone try to fold a fitted bed sheet—it reveals how well (or catastrophically) people interact with a system.
When system design leaves users bewildered, tech writers are saddled with the fallout, scrambling to cover up the cracks with explanations that shouldn't have been necessary to create in the first place.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Content Wrangler to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.