My company is looking at minimalisic manuals, (J. M. Carroll) for use in online training. I like the idea of only giving them what they need but, My question is how do you add the information they "need to know" without turning the instructions in to a long page. Intuitive training comes to mind, such as mouse over ballons containing the extra information but they may not roll over, as it were.
thanks
Steve
2 Responses
Confused?
Hi Steve
I can’t speak for anyone else but I have no idea what this post is about? Could be the reason why nobody has answered?
Could it be explained in more simple terms?
Regards
Steve
Minimalistic manuals
Steve
I think I may have a remote idea what you are on about so I’ll have stab at an answer (and if it is different do post a clarifying message so others can do better).
The roll over balloon idea works well where the further explanation is 50 words or less. Getting them to know about the roll over is about clear instructions and demo at the start and having plenty of them so people discover for themselves. Make the balloon appear to one side of the original text, not over it, and make it work when they roll over any part of the sentance not just a key word, though you can shade a key word or phrase to indicate it has a further balloon explanation.
For more detailed explanations I’d make the key phrase a hyperlink to a further pop-up page and also have a ‘For more information..’ item, with the same hyperlink, at the bottom of the page. You can then create a hierarchy of explanations. By that I mean, on the first level further explanation page you can have hyperlinks to yet more detailed explanations, thus allowing people to drill down to the precise detail they require.
The key to these additional pages is to have clear navigation back to the original page they came from and to have very tight authoring of the explanations so that you retain the flow even when you navigate away from and then back to a page.
Hope that makes sense and is what you are after.
Graham