A Method for Designing Computer Support Documentation

Current computer support documentation, user's manuals, fail to communicate effectively with the modern computer user. Most documentation exhibit inadequate direction, confusing organization, and overall poor design, and thus are hard to use. A review of documentation techniques used by government, academic, commercial, and private technical writers revealed effective techniques are well known but are often not applied to current documentation. Technical writers continue to produce ineffective manuals because no comprehensive preparation method exists. The comprehensive method presented in this thesis includes: documentations proper role in the computer system in describing the logical relationships between system elements; the technical writer's role in the systems design team of converting user desires into specifications and system descriptions into user understandable information; and an overall hierarchical and structured approach to document design similar to that used in software engineering. Also provided is a modeling technique to help evaluate computer system design decisions.