Ask the Readers: User Guides
Yesterday I posted a link to a post on Design Litmus about creating screencast user guides for your clients. That got me thinking: I wonder what other people do for user guides? I’ll bet others wonder this too, and what better venue to find out than making an Ask the Readers post!
The options for user guides are myriad. Some people create rich PDFs, like the ones from Headspace Design. Others, like Matt at Design Litmus, shoot screencasts and include them as accessories in the control panel. Then again, David in the comments from yesterday maintains that you’re “doing it wrong” if your client needs anything more than a well-organized site with simple inline documentation.
I’m sure there are more ideas than these, so today’s question is simple: How do you equip your clients to use the ExpressionEngine site you built for them?
Posted on Nov 11, 2010 by Brian Warren
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Paul Hachmang — 08:43 on 11.11.2010
I actually find the whole userguide thing a bit overrated. Good interfaces do not need a userguide, they only require a user with basic user interface experience, which can not be learned with a user guide.
We usually teach our clients where to find things, and how to find things out when they don’t understand things.
of course, when an action is too difficult for the client to understand or because all the steps need to happen in a specific order (updating a website from a product feed, etc.), I do provide a manual for that.
In general, If my client can not find it’s way inside the CMS to do the things they want, they shouldn’t edit anything inside the CMS anyway. Clients who can’t work with computers in general should consult a ‘experienced user’ to make choices and adding/modifing content.
For example. Some of my clients do not know how to upload an image in their wysiwyg editor. This is basic knowledge to edit a website and usually described a lot about the general computer/internet experience of the client.
I do have to say that i always set it up as logical as possible and will always help my clients pointing them in the right direction, but i will not help them using the system.
John Faulds — 15:44 on 11.11.2010
I’ve created a default set of user guides in HTML with video accompaniments that cover the basics of working with entries and using the features of the WYSIWYG editor including uploading files that sit on my server and I use AJAX to load them into user guide templates that sit on each client site. So much like includes/embeds on a site, I only have to edit the guides in one place to have them updated across the board.
Then depending on the complexity of the site, I might add a single site-specific page to the user guide.