Human factoring a text editor manual

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Abstract
This article describes how we rewrote a manual for a text editor following human-factors guidelines and revised it according to the results of developmental testing. The new manual was then evaluated with secretaries who were given either the original or the rewritten manual and asked to do two editing tasks. We measured the quality of the finished text; the number of different commands used; the amount and type of assistance requested; and attitudes towards the manuals, program and tasks. There were significant differences between the two groups of users on the performance measures and on attitudes towards the manuals in favour of the new manual. We propose a model of user-documentation interaction and suggest a methodology for preparing computer documentation.

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