It’s the Eighties All Over Again: Help Strategies for Touch-Enabled Devices

Twenty-five years ago, Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer to the world. The two main features of the Mac were the graphical user interface and the mouse. While Apple didn’t invent these technologies, it was the first company to combine them in what we would now call an integrated user experience. During the remainder of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, other companies followed Apple’s lead.

Today it’s hard to imagine a personal computer without a mouse or similar pointing device. However, there was a period of time when developers—and tech writers—couldn’t safely assume their users would have access to a mouse or would know how to use it.

We are beginning to enter a similar period of time for touch-enabled devices. (See my last post for an introduction to these devices.) Though touch-enabled devices are becoming more prevalent, they are far from ubiquitous.

To help you write documentation for touch-enabled devices, I’ve compiled the following list of strategies. Most of these strategies work for both touch-based interaction and more traditional mouse-and-keyboard interaction.

• If your product utilizes gestures or other complex interactions, include videos or still photos of these interactions in an introductory section of your help or manual.
• If your product works with both touch and mouse-and-keyboard interfaces, describe how to complete basic tasks with both interfaces (for example, zooming or right-clicking).
• Choose your verbs carefully. “Press” is a good alternative to “click” and works for both touch and mouse-and-keyboard interfaces.
• Ensure buttons and links in help are large enough for users to press with their fingers. If possible, prototype the help on the touch-enabled device itself.
• Make your help and other online documentation as easy as possible to navigate without a keyboard. For example, include an index of keywords that users can scroll through in addition to a text-driven search feature.
• While the tri-pane help window has become a standard, you may need to forgo it for touch-enabled devices such as smart phones with limited screen real estate.
• If you use tool tips or other embedded help features that require hovering, develop alternative techniques for touch-enabled devices.
• Image maps can be very effective with touch-enabled interfaces and are an interesting alternative to TOCs for help navigation. For example, you could include a process diagram on the help’s home page and allow users to drill down to a specific step in the process to view the relevant help topic.
• If you have access to development resources, consider incorporating touch features in your help and other online documentation. For example, you could allow users to annotate help topics in their own handwriting or navigate the help system using the same set of gestures that are available in the application. (Tip: Some of the annotation features in Adobe Acrobat and Reader work well with touch-enabled interfaces.)

Can you think of any additional strategies?

Comments

Posted by Whitney  on  25 March 2009  at  03:01 PM

Posted by Ken Schatzke  on  25 March 2009  at  06:37 PM

Posted by FATIMA  on  11 May 2009  at  01:06 AM

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