Tom Johnson tackles help content with Organizing Help Content: Breaking Out of Topic-Based Hierarchies on Thursday, 1 December, from 4:00-5:00 PM EST (GMT-5). Organizing help content so that users can both find and learn information often requires technical writers to break out of the traditional topic-based folders and move toward faceted navigation, search engine optimization, interface text, level-based help, and other methods for organizing content.
Organizing content is the heart what technical writers do. In organizing content, technical writers often have two competing questions: how can I help users find the information? And how can I help users learn the information? Complete answers to these questions pull the technical writer in two different directions: information architecture and instructional design. Regardless of these different directions, a good technical writer has to consider and account for these two purposes and organize the help accordingly. Maintaining the status quo of topic-based hierarchical folders often fails to achieve either purpose. This webinar will present a variety of alternative methods of organization that technical writers can implement to break out of topic-based hierarchies and create more usable help.