Fantastic Technical Writing: Enhance Your Readers' Access With A Visual Index
Aus Salespoint
People are visual creatures. They look at your item, and see, for instance, a button or display. They want to find out about that control or indicator. A Visual Index is a straightforward but powerful document access tool that enables your Readers to uncover the data that they want.
This write-up describes the Visual Index notion and tells how to produce 1 for your document.
A VISUAL INDEX
A Visual Index is a image of your item or procedure with hyperlinks to...
OVERVIEW
People are visual creatures. They look at your item, and see, for instance, a button or display. They want to uncover out about that control or indicator. A Visual Index is a straightforward but effective document access tool that enables your Readers to locate the details that they want.
This post describes the Visual Index concept and tells how to generate 1 for your document.
A VISUAL INDEX
A Visual Index is a image of your solution or procedure with links to the relevant info in the connected document. Making use of a Visual Index, your Readers can appear at the image, and rapidly jump to the place in your document that describes the item of interest.
Your document may consist of several Visual Indexes (the plural of "index' is "indexes" not "indices").
Begins WITH A Image
The Visual Index begins with a image of your item or approach. There are a variety of types of photos to use, based on the item variety:
* Physical Product (for instance, a barbecue or video disk recorder)
Images of the solution (all relevant views).
* A Process or Procedure: A flowchart of the steps and decisions in the process or procedure.
* Software Solution 1: Screenshots of the software.
* Software Product 2: Prior to and following images of the operate that the item does.
* Organization: An organization chart.
LABEL THE Picture
Label all the User-Solution Interaction Points (U-PIP) on the picture. A U-PIP is anywhere that your User and the solution might interact. U-PIP's consist of controls, displays, and relevant physical characteristics of the solution (such as handles, latches, and so on.). Provide a meaningful (to your Reader) label (name) for the U-PIP. (Use that exact same exact label everywhere you refer to that U-PIP.)
Aside: If your solution utilizes sounds to inform the User, then contain a table of those sounds, what they mean, and a link into the relevant location of your document (describing the sound).
LINK THE U-PIP's TO YOUR DOCUMENT
Up to this point, the Visual Index is just like any nicely-labeled picture of your item or approach. Nevertheless, continue reading when you add links into your document, the well-labeled picture becomes a Visual Index.
The link must be to a section of your document that you believe your reader would most want to reach to get the information about that U-PIP. (This is a basic query whenever you create an index: "does my reader want to come to this place in my document for this item?")
Your technique of adding links to the image depends upon the read more publishing mechanism for the document. If the document is published as:
* A Printed document, then use page numbers for the links
* An Electronic Document, then use hyperlinks that a Reader can click on to follow. If the document is published as HTML, then the visual index can be an image map.
Instance 1: A Discomfort IN MY FOOT
I have a pain in my foot when I walk. If I go to a site about feet, it would be really efficient for finding out about my discomfort, if I could see a image of a foot with various areas where the pain could be. Hyperlinks full report from the foot areas to precise internet pages would enable me to find the information about my certain foot discomfort quickly.
Instance two: PHOTO CORRECTING Software program
Show a image with the errors that your software program can manage, ahead of and following correction. Right here the U-PIP's are each and every of the photo errors.
Example three: A COURSE ON WRITING USER DOCUMENTATION
The Visual Index is a flowchart for making the User Document. Given that the Course is presented in HTML, the Visual Index is made from an image map, with hyperlinks into the sections of the Course relevant to each and every item in the flowchart.
BOTTOM LINE
A Visual Index is a easy notion. But like numerous simple ideas it is really powerful. Try to contain 1 in your next document. You are going to be undertaking your Reader a wonderful service.
