24 March 2011

Usability 101 - A novice's look at documentation usability

Recently in my team, we formed 3-4 member focus groups to encourage initiatives around operational excellence and personal development. I am part of the group working towards understanding the usability of our documents, conducting analysis and eventually (hopefully) suggesting and/or implementing ideas that will increase the usability and reach of our documentation. There are other teams looking at process improvement and automation.
Earlier to this activity, just out of interest, I prepared a presentation to understand the effect of usability on documentation. I have uploaded the presentation to slideshare here: http://slidesha.re/fWFrBE.
This is a very basic presentation and many an expert may snicker at the simplicity, but I am a novice at this. Any and all comments are welcome. I have to of course acknowledge and thank the many technical communicators from whose blogs and articles I picked content from. The primary contribution was from @tomjohnson website http://idratherbewriting.com/.
How do you include usability within your documentation projects?