Introduction to DITA

Tony Self, HyperWrite Pty Ltd

DITA is an open source, XML-based architecture, standard and methodology for creating, defining, authoring and storing technical information, including user manuals, Help systems, support information and other forms of documentation and training materials. Larger organisations are increasingly preferring DITA to proprietary document storage formats, as DITA offers significant efficiency and usability advantages. But DITA is not limited to large organisations; it makes good sense for projects of any size to be moved to the DITA architecture.

In this workshop, we will explain the concepts of DITA through practical examples, demonstrations, interactive discussions, and a group exercise.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The business benefits of adopting DITA
• The principles of structured authoring and XML
• How to analyse a document's structure and topic types
• How to plan and model a document
• How you can save time and money through content re-use, repurposing, and conditions
• How to identify information types in legacy documents
• The logic and importance of semantic mark-up
• How to author DITA content
• New strategies for creating and publishing content within your organisation
• The skills needed within your team

Five Ways to Test User Assistance Usability

Mary Deaton, Deaton Interactive Design

Audience: Usability novices and intermediate UA writers wanting to broaden their skills

What makes Help usable? And how do you find out if your Help is usable? This hands-on workshop will introduce you to five basic methods for determining the usability of a Help system.

Methods range from evaluation techniques done by you and your team to those in which you work with users either through structured feedback or direct observation.

We'll start by looking at the best user assistance usability checklists, proceed to conducting a user edit study, watch a video of an observational lab study, pair-up to test written procedures, and then practice developing information seeking tasks for a cognitive walk-through with a paper prototype.

You'll come away with the experience of doing usability research activities and materials you can take back to the workplace to use on your own user assistance projects. Bring your laptop for the most immersive experience. All the materials and software you need are provided.

If you have never done usability evaluation of user assistance, this is a quick, effective introduction. If you have done usability research, this workshop can expand your options by showing you a range of methods that can be used throughout the development cycle.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How to create a Help usability plan
• Define five usability methods you can use to evaluate Help
• Know how to conduct a cognitive walk-through
• Conduct a user edit session
• Select an evaluation checklist appropriate for evaluating Help

Introduction to Captivate

Matthew Ellison

This session provides an excellent jump start for anyone in the early stages of working with Adobe Captivate. In addition to explaining how to use the key features of the tool, it also provides a range of tips and best practice guidelines based on Matthew Ellison's extensive experience of eLearning and Captivate development. You'll find out what are the essential features of an effective software demonstration, how to design an interactive simulation, and how to ensure that your users learn and retain the skills you are teaching. You'll also discover how to make significant time savings by working more efficiently through the use of templates. One of the take-aways from the workshop is a valuable checklist of action items and issues that you need to consider for every Captivate project you work on.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How best to record the task
• How to enable the user to control the pace of demonstrations
• Tips for working with the timeline
• Designing interactions that challenge the user
• How best to provide hints
• A range of useful branching strategies
• How to maximize the power of templates