Non-Linear Software Documentation with Interactive Code Examples

Documentation enables sharing knowledge between the developers of a technology and its users. Creating quality documents, however, is challenging: Documents must satisfy the needs of a large audience without being overwhelming for individuals. We address this challenge with a new document format, named Casdoc. Casdoc documents are interactive resources centered around code examples for programmers. Explanations of the code elements are presented as annotations that the readers reveal based on their needs. We evaluated Casdoc in a field study with over 300 participants who used 126 documents as part of a software design course. During the study, the majority of participants adopted Casdoc instead of a baseline format and used interactive annotations to reveal additional information about the code example. Although participants collectively viewed the majority of the documents’ content, they individually revealed a minority of the annotations they saw. We gathered insights into five aspects of Casdoc that can be applied to other formats, and highlighted five lessons learned to improve navigability in online documents.