[Actionchix] Re: LinuxChix Documentation Project (Was: [Newchix] Perceived Lack Of Intermediate Level Linux Tutorials, Howtos)

[Mary]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2005, Jenn Vesperman wrote:
> (As I understand it) The LDP is not about a particular style of
> documentation. It's about collecting and cataloguing ALL the
> documentation (or at least the free/open content stuff).
[snip]
> 
> I'm sure they'd listen to a proposal for some sort of 'aimed at the
> novice' or 'aimed at intermediate users' category, especially if it was
> backed by examples of the sorts of document you're thinking of.

It may be worthwhile also to provide some user feedback of their
indexes. A particularly valuble thing to do is actual "user testing". To
do this, you get a number of people (5 is about right) *in the target
market*. You give them what you think are reasonable tasks for their
level of experience, and which are actually possible given the
interface.

So it might be "find the document that will help you connect to the
Internet with linux" or "find the document that will help you upgrade
Linux". (The documents must exist, just as when you user test software
and tell them to "Save the document" -- there needs to be some way to do
it, the experiment is to see if you've put it where it's obvious.)

Then you show them the LDP page, and you watch them and take notes. What
do they try first (search? clicking on the index?) What are their search
terms? What links do they click on? You don't help them at all. (I think
you usually explain this to them.) You just watch and learn.

Almost always what happens is that they take far longer than you'd
expect and that they look in weird places. This is good feedback. It can
be used to improve the index and the titles of documents to match what
they expect, rather than what the experts expected them to expect.

It may be that the LDP would find this extremely useful as feedback.

Likewise, you could user test individual documents ("set up your
Internet connection using this document") and give similar feedback to
the authors.

-Mary