Hi,
Martina Waller wrote:
Hi Uwe,
we have two types of invisible search words or cross-references in the
index:
First, the "see" cross-references that teach the users to use the
"correct" term during searches (ex.: frames, see borders).
Second, the "see also" cross-references that invite the user to extend
the search to other areas (ex.: captions, see also legends/callouts)
thanks for clarifying the difference of "see" versus "see also"
cross-references.
For the "see" cross-references we could have a table which lists our
technical terms on one side and possible "user" terms on the other. But
I do not believe that this is a real help for the user because he must
already know the technical term which he can then look up directy in the
Index or Find tab. I would prefer to collect the "user" terms and insert
them as "see" cross-references in the index. For this procedure, a
special feedback tool that should be integrated in the help, would be
needed, because users tend to forget their individual search terms after
a while.
For "see also" cross-references we do not have the "bad" and the "good"
terms, but we have terms that are more or less similar. The most simple
approach would be a list of synonyms. But I would prefer a sort of word
clouds with the most similar words in the center, for ex. "captions" and
"legends", and the others in the margins, for ex. "names". "names" could
then be in the margin of another cloud with "callouts" and "labels" in
the center.
I really love tag word clouds! You can see one of them at the top of
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/
Where and how should this be presented to the user who looks up a term
in the application help?
In the current word clouds, every word is a link to some other place. It
would not be helpful to have a word cloud of all the words that are
inside a certain help page on top of that page.
Should we introduce a word cloud of all the help search words - as in
http://www.twitterverse.com/ ?
But that would have to stay outside the installed help. We can provide a
static word cloud with the most popular search terms of the last
versions, to be installed with the next version. As a kind of Help 2.0
home page.
Uwe
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