Labs/Ubiquity/Documentation/Documentation Style Guidelines

Written Text

Minimalist documentation is a modality of documentation emphasizes three principals:

Procedural Instruction

Focus on examples of real tasks and activities not conceptual overviews.

Make each example a self contained unit independent of any other example. Examples should be broken down to the command level with stand-alone examples of each command.

1. Tap option + space bar
2. Type: wikipedia firefox
3. You should see this exact screen: Image
4. Tap the Enter key to open the Wikipedia article in a new tab

This how the above example requires no previous knowledge that the user needs to press option and spacebar to bring up ubiquity.

Rational

Thus minimalist documentation is focused on examples of tasks, there is no attempt to teach the underlying models of operation. Real users are trying to do something, not understand the grand scheme of things.

By focusing on procedural, task based instruction, minimalist documentation caters to how users naturally browse documentation and think about their problems.

Users interaction with documentation occurs when they are inhibited in performing a task. When users want to kill the paper clip, they do not take a tutorial on how to use word or read from the beginning of the manual- they skip to the “paper clip” chapter hoping to find something about turning it off.

Tutorials and other traditional documentation which strive to give conceptual overviews are the best way to learn. Volumes of psychological research prove that the thorough processing prompted by a conceptual overview improves retention and performance.

However, the typical setting for traditional psychological tests of learning guarantee both motivation and attention -such as work training. Web browsers are a glass pane- their purpose is to deliver content, their utility invisible, their new features just smudges on the glass, obscuring the view of their content.

Thus, the Minimalist method of procedural instruction gets a user on-board and gets to the broad conceptual understanding later. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this, but I will list them later.

Minimal Wording

Facilitate a users search for information by removing obstacles blocking their path- excess verbiage. Be ruthless.

In a larger perspective simplify all help UI's (users were confused by the Wiki additions) and dump users directly to help oriented Q/A systems such as Get Satisfaction and Chat rooms at the end of wiki posts.

Reasoning

Minimal wording extends beyond short sentences, intros, exits, and philosophical reasoning's are for blog-posts, not for intros. Users just do not read them,

"[Users] encounter a usability problem on average about once every 75 minutes and typically spend about a minute looking for a solution" Be ruthless. [1]

Furthermore, "Users will search once, maybe twice."[2] If their first attempt isn't successful it's best to dump them to a moderated assistance queue then let the problem fester.

Error Recovery

If there is a common error or bug in a particular release, make sure to include examples and remedies of that error.

One option is to include screenshots, tightly focused on only relevant information or using a spotlight, with prompts such as, "Can you find this on your screen?"

Guided Discovery

Try to start with the simple first, and avoid more complex commands. Ubiquity's interaction is pretty simple, so this one is easy.

Guidelines for implementation in Ubiquity.

Minimalist documentation facilitates casual learning and focus on immediate progress instead of true understanding. People learn and retain better if they process information deeply. The tutorial has served Ubiquity well in that it weeds out users whom would be unable to handle the difficulty of such a situation and only people who know how to work Ubiquity wander into the IRC channel and mailing list. Much as Wikipedia's poor interface prevents many lower-level users from contributing faulty information.

However, Ubiquity is beyond that era. New users are needed- developers cannot be bogged down in support situations, documentation, etc.

Procedural Instruction

Slash the tutorial, get rid of video overviews, etc, and

Error Recovery

Even screenshots seem to be unable to cue users that something is wrong. Video and animations may help this.

However, error recovery should be implemented in Ubiquity proper. One avenue is highly optimized error pages. When the parser reaches a level of uncertainty it could dump users to a google search, or another "best effort" end-point, with command documentation embedded in the page- something akin to Google's varied spelling corrections.

Eventually, a continual improvement loop could feed metrics such actions taken after the error page, what input produces error pages, click through of command results, manual selection of auto-suggestions, etc.

Guided Instruction

Ubiquity is heavily dependent on it's auto-suggest function. Optimizations are difficult due to the high cost of eye tracking equipment. In the future, a streamed interface could seed different variations.