A very broad palette

Saying that technology plays a large role in the lives of Help authors is an enormous understatement. Technology provides us with the methods of constructing our user assistance components and also supplies us with the medium for presentation. To a large extent, the use of technology defines our unique identity among technical communication professionals.

In our first survey question we wanted to find out what Help authors think about the technologies available to them and how much they have worked with them. The focus was on broad solution technologies as opposed to specific file formats. For example, XML is certainly a technology, but it is one that gains value only when used to facilitate a broader technology like the World Wide Web. Specific tools and foundation technologies like XML are covered in both the Skills and the Tools questions of the survey. Here, we provided a list of eighteen popular user assistance technologies and asked the respondents to rank the items on a scale of 1-5 for both importance and experience. The judging criteria were different for the two aspects as you can see in the actual survey.

The figure below shows what respondents picked as the most important user assistance technologies. Printed manuals stood high on top of the list of importance. Seventy-eight percent of respondents ranked it as "Invaluable" or "Very Important" to their documentation set. We defined Printed Manuals in the survey as "user, installation, or reference guides." Quick reference materials also scored high at 67%. This was defined as "quick reference cards, quick start guides, job aids, etc."

Paper and ink appears to be here to stay, but the magnitude of print usage is probably not as dramatic as the numbers suggest. While some of us may be distributing comprehensive procedure and reference works on paper, most documentation groups use print as a supplement to the documentation available via context-sensitive Help and the Web.

The big surprise (maybe not so big) is the importance respondents placed on the World Wide Web or intranet as a delivery medium for user assistance. Here 76% indicated that the Web is vital to their efforts. This has increased dramatically in just a year. In a survey conducted by WinWriters in 1999, 49% of respondents identified the Web or intranet as an important component. Currently, the Web is primarily used as a supplement to Help and manuals. As we move increasingly toward Web-based applications and broadband Internet connections, it is likely that most user assistance will be remotely served via the Web.

The importance of Microsoft's WinHelp has retreated in importance, dropping by about 25 percentage points from the 1999 survey. This is no surprise with the industry-wide emphasis on moving to Web-compatible file formats. What is very surprising is that Microsoft's HTML Help technology has only increased by 6 points from last year's survey. Four years after its first announcement and three years after the first release, HTML Help is only considered very important or a core component to half of the respondents. This was supposed to be a big year for the acceptance and implementation of HTML Help systems now that the necessary Help engine infrastructure is in place on most user's Windows systems.

In contrast, Browser-based Help is growing in popularity, from 39% in the 1999 survey to 58% this year. This form of content delivery uses standard and non-standard Web technologies to deliver Help content via a Web browser. Implementation strategies run the gamut from using basic HTML pages to proprietary solutions like WebHelp and InterHelp to complex renderings employing JavaScript and Active Server Pages.

Adobe Acrobat continues to be a staple in many of our documentation sets. It is mostly used for legacy print documents like user guides and also for supplemental white papers and troubleshooting information. The Acrobat PDF files can be delivered on an installation CD-ROM or via the Web.

Experience

We also asked the respondents to list their experience with the various technologies. The figure below shows the percent of respondents who indicated they either used a technology "frequently in several projects" or were knowledgeable enough to "write a book about it." It appears that most of us are finding the necessary training we need in order to support the important technologies. Almost everyone (92%) had a large amount of experience with printed manuals and 65-75% indicated the same level of experience for the Web, quick reference materials, Acrobat, and WinHelp.

For HTML Help, two thirds of the respondents have little or no experience with it at all. Only 75 respondents rated themselves as experts. This is surprising given the enormous amount of attention given to this subject over the past several years.

Other findings of note

Only 10% of the respondents see JavaHelp as very important or an invaluable component despite 24% indicating that Java is one of the platforms they support (see the Platform discussion). Even though it has been almost three years since the first JavaHelp release, only 13 of the 1300 respondents rated themselves as an expert with this technology.

Embedded User Assistance is gaining as an important technology. The survey defined this as "any Help information coded directly into the application user interface." Here, 38% rated it "Very Important" or "Invaluable" compared to 26% in the 1999 survey, but 21% indicated that they had no need for it at all.

The venerable Read Me file is still considered "Invaluable" to 18% of respondents and "Very Important" to 25%. Even in the age of HTML, it seems we can't disregard the power of a capsule for late-breaking info that is simple to construct, deliver, and display.

Respondents expressed moderate interest in Interactive Help and Product demos. CBT, HyperHelp, Oracle Help, QuickHelp, and Apple Help are used by very few.

HTML Help

Given the tools and training many of us have invested in Microsoft's HTML Help, it may be worth examining it in more detail using the table below. Note that 19% of respondents indicated they have no need for it at all—the same number as for WinHelp. This indicates a shift in the importance of Windows proprietary Help in the minds of developers despite the fact that 98% of the respondents support a Windows application (see the Platform discussion). Very few (15%) find HTML Help "useful but could get along without it," suggesting that it is more of an all or nothing decision. There has been a lot of practical exposure to HTML Help with 81% having experimented with it or done more.