The software industry is loaded with help manuals and tutorials. It doesn’t matter how complex or easy the product is, a help manual or a tutorial is a must have.
Why would someone need a help manual or a tutorial if the product is self-explanatory, obvious, easy to use? In fact why not build applications/products that have usable user interfaces and require no training, no context sensitive help or cheat sheets. Yes, I am talking about intuitive applications that guide the user to complete their tasks on their own without referring to any support material or external resource. This post tries to raise some questions in favour of intuitive software applications/products.
Let’s begin with the basic question.
What users want?
Consider any user of a software application:
- They are aware of their work processes.
- They know their tasks.
All that they want to know is how to complete the tasks using a software product.
When users require tutorials or help manuals?
A user will need tutorials and help manuals when:
- How the product can help them is not obvious.
- The steps to use the features are not clear.
- The user gets started with the product but is stuck with a task and is not able to proceed.
In some cases tutorials and help manuals also fail and people are left for hours figuring out how to complete a task using the product. Some give up and some start searching the entire web for help.
How software products/applications force users to seek help
I am an avid user of Facebook. I use it so frequently that I do not realize how challenging and difficult it is to use Facebook. The first time I visited Facebook, I was just too confused and apprehensive to use it.
Reasons
- I knew it was a social networking site similar to Orkut. But then I really didn’t know where to get started.
- I checked some profiles that were really organized. I was wondering how to achieve that perfection in my profile page.
- It took me days to get comfortable with Facebook and use all its features effectively. I noticed that I was not alone. Many other newbies felt lost and some also gave up. For example one of my friends was wondering how to send a private message to someone in Facebook. If you are a ++regular Facebook user, you might find this strange and you might also think that my friend is not tech savvy. But that’s not the case. I am sure lots of others have problems figuring out a lot many simple things in Facebook.
With Facebook, you need to be patient and persistent. This way you will be able to figure out how to use it. But how may are that patient enough I wonder? The truth is there are really patient people in this world 
Jokes apart, when it comes to Facebook, its a great way to connect with people and is really engaging. Above all there is peer pressure. I guess that’s why people push themselves to use the site, no matter how difficult it is to use. This might not be the case with business applications.
Another example is the new wordpress interface. If you regularly use wordpress, you should be knowing that wordpress has revamped their site completely. My mother who is 50 + is a regular user of wordpress. I taught her how to use it and she learnt really fast. After wordpress revamped their site appearance, she was completely lost and really didn’t know how to go about a simple task such as including an hyperlink which she did with ease in the previous interface.
The examples above are just to illustrate how difficult and annoying it can get to use a software product without any help/support. This being said, now I need to mention atleast two applications, that require no help manuals or tutorials to get started. Of course the choice is completely subjective. Feel free to challenge my choice
Applications that you can use without any help
Snagit
Snagit is a screen capture tool that helps people capture screenshots from software products/applications. I referred to no help manuals when I first used Snagit. Before using Snagit, I was using the Prt Scr option in the keyboard. When someone mentioned about Snagit, I was wondering what difference can this product create with a simple screen capture action. The product does create a lot of difference. It not only has some cool screen capture options but is also very easy to use. So here are the top 5 things I like about Snagit:
Top 5 things I like about Snagit
- The main menu – where the screen capture options are obvious.
- Guided Instructions – The product guides you to take your first screen capture.
- The instruction “Press Print Screen to capture” is clearly stated in the main menu.
- Once you click on “Capture” you are informed what to do next.
- Tooltips – When you mouse over an option in the main menu, you see a feature description.
- The snagit editor – The options in the editor are self-explainatory and easy to use.
- Good Orientation – A new user trying to use Snagit, will be able to figure out the whats, whys and hows of the features in less than 15 minutes.
Here is an overview video of Snagit:
You can download the trial version here.
Ning
I would also vote for Ning when it comes to ease of use.
Ning is a service that allows you to create online social networks. Last we at Instructional Designers Community of India wanted to create an online social network for the community . We were sure about the kind of features and facilities that we wanted to facilitate interactions and learning activities within the community. We were evaluating some freely available networks when one of my friends referred Ning. Ning instantly communicated to us that it had all the features to make an online network work well. I liked it instantly and I also learned how to use it in a very short time. I needed no help manuals or tutorials to get started.
Top 3 Things I like About Ning
- Simple and easy to use
- How the product can help you is obvious.
- Labels and naming conventions – These make the product features obvious.
- Good Orientation – A new user can get started in less than 15 minutes.
Intuitive software applications will help companies bring down their training budget. Embedding the learning/training component within a software application may be challenging but not impossible. “Where there is a will, there is a way”. And of course there may not be a single way to doing things though the usability concepts and principles may be obvious and remain the same . Here is an interesting article on 8 characteristics of successful user interfaces.
With this I end my post and leave it open for discussion:
- Can you name one product that you managed to use without any help?
- Do you think it is easy to eliminate software product tutorials?
- What are the challenges in developing intuitive applications?
- Is it a mental barrier or a technology barrier?
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