This week several of us in InfoDev attended a 2-day seminar on Web Content Usability, taught by Expero, a local usability firm. Lots to say about that, but I'll start with the end, where we asked for and received a quick evaluation of usability issues with our new Helpsite. Here's what we got, in the order they were brainstormed:
- Fix the CSS for the site so that the default font size is larger and that they're resizeable in IE.
- Consider redesigning the left nav area to not use light text on dark background (harder to read).
- Add the "updated on" date to the HTML page template (already exists for print outputs).
- Consider renaming the [Contents] button to something like [Sync with TOC], since that's how it functions; study MSDN for models.
- Try to engineer [Hide/show] to let users control display of the left nav.
- Offer a "permalink" to help users bookmark and share page links.
- Expand the Search form area with guidance on how to search effectively.
- Consider off-loading full-sized screenshots as pop-ups and showing thumbnails; study Wikipedia for a model.
- Change the style of the bolded text to something other than blue, which suggests clickability (default link color is blue).
- Design in more space between the "In this section" and "See Also" columns, which tend to run together.
- Add a Print CSS that hides away online-only content tags.
- Troubleshoot why Procedure topics don't have "In the section" links.
- Edit out literal enumeration in topic titles ("2. Create plan"), which goober up the Index.
- Clean up and standardize the wording of troubleshooting topics; beginning with error messages/quotes/etc. goober up Index and Search
The good news is, I guess, that most of these were already on my to-do list -- so, we're not clueless, just busy! :-)