Balancing user needs and content sustainability
Image: Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash
Earlier this month I attended the 2023 Australian Society for Technical Communication conference in Melbourne. As with previous conferences, it was a great opportunity to learn from peers and connect with people in the profession.
One session that particularly got me thinking involved a discussion on how to best use images such as screenshots when writing instructional content. One problem technical writers face when developing guidance for end users is that the interface can change without notice. This has the potential to make their instructions – including any screenshots of the interface – redundant.
It's not always practical or even possible to update the help content to match every interface change. But if the instructions don’t match what the user is seeing on their screen, the value of these instructions may be compromised. For example, where a button appears on the screen, what it is called and even its function can change from one update to another.
Text can usually be updated relatively easily but (and I speak from experience) screenshots take a lot longer. When recently updating some of Red Pony’s internal process documentation, I realised that not only were many of the screenshots out of date, but that I probably didn’t need them in the first place. However, other screenshots, even if slightly dated, were still extremely useful, and provided crucial information more clearly and more effectively than would have been possible through words alone.
Part of the technical writing process is determining when an image will aid sufficiently in communicating meaning. Will it justify its inclusion and the implied future effort to replace the image when the interface changes (as it inevitably will)?
Here are some questions I ask myself when deciding when and how often to include screenshots in help documentation:
How much information does a particular image provide, and is this information important to the user’s understanding of what they are trying to achieve?
Could the use of an image convey this information more simply to complement (or possibly even replace) the text?
How well does the text cater for the different learning styles and expertise of users, and when might the inclusion of an image improve this?
How often and how much will the interface likely change in future?
What resources will be available to update these images when the interface does change?
Answering these questions requires balancing the competing objectives of helping users to understand the information provided and developing content that can evolve with the software it describes.
