Fantastic Technical Writing: Increase Your Readers' Access With A Visual Index

People are visual creatures. They appear at your product, and see, for example, a button or display. They want to discover out about that control or indicator. A Visual Index is a straightforward but powerful document access tool that enables your Readers to discover the data that they want.

This post describes the Visual Index idea and tells how to develop one particular for your document.

A VISUAL INDEX

A Visual Index is a image of your product or procedure with links to...

OVERVIEW

Men and women are visual creatures. They look at your solution, and see, for example, a button or display. They want to locate out about that manage or indicator. A Visual Index is a basic but effective document access tool that enables your Readers to find the info that they want.

This post describes the Visual Index notion and tells how to create a single for your document.

A VISUAL INDEX

A Visual Index is a picture of your product or process with links to the relevant details in the connected document. Employing a Visual Index, your Readers can look at the image, and speedily jump to the spot in your document that describes the item of interest.

Your document could include many Visual Indexes (the plural of "index' is "indexes" not "indices").

Starts WITH A Image

The Visual Index begins with a image of your item or process. There are numerous sorts of photographs to use, based on the product variety:

* Physical Solution (for example, a barbecue or video disk recorder)

Images of the product (all relevant views).

* A Process or Procedure: A flowchart of the steps and choices in the process or approach.

* Computer software Product 1: Screenshots of the computer software.

* Computer software Item 2: Ahead of and immediately after pictures of the perform that the item does.

* Organization: An organization chart.

LABEL THE Picture

Label all the User-Product Interaction Points (U-PIP) on the image. A U-PIP is anywhere that your User and the item might interact. U-PIP's consist of controls, displays, and relevant physical features of the product (such as handles, latches, and so forth.). Provide a meaningful (to your Reader) label (name) for the U-PIP. (Use that very same precise label everywhere you refer to that U-PIP.)

Aside: If your product makes use of sounds to inform the User, then consist of a table of these sounds, what they mean, and a link into the relevant region of your document (describing the sound).

LINK THE U-PIP's TO YOUR DOCUMENT

Up to this point, the Visual Index is just like any effectively-labeled image of your item or process. Nonetheless, when you add hyperlinks into your document, the well-labeled image becomes a Visual Index.

The link really should be to a section of your document that you believe your reader would most want to reach to get the details about that U-PIP. (This is a fundamental query whenever you develop an index: "does my reader want to come to this spot in my document for this item?")

Your approach of adding hyperlinks to the picture depends upon the publishing mechanism for the document. If the document is published as:

* A Printed document, then use page numbers for the links

* An Electronic Document, then use hyperlinks that a Reader can click on to follow. If the document is published as HTML, then the visual index can be an image map.

Instance 1: A Pain IN MY FOOT

I have a discomfort in my foot when I walk. If I go to a web site about feet, it would be quite efficient for discovering out about my pain, if I could see a picture of a foot with a variety of areas where the pain could be. Hyperlinks from the foot locations to particular web pages would allow me to discover the information about my precise foot pain quickly.

Example two: PHOTO CORRECTING going here Software

Show a image with the errors that your software can manage, before and following more help correction. Here the U-PIP's are every single of the photo errors.

Instance 3: A COURSE ON WRITING USER DOCUMENTATION

The Visual Index is a flowchart for making the User Document. Considering that the Course is presented in HTML, the Visual Index is created from an image map, with hyperlinks into the sections of the Course relevant to every item in the flowchart.

BOTTOM LINE

A Visual Index is a easy idea. But like numerous basic concepts it is quite powerful. Try to incorporate a single continue in your next document. You are going to be performing your Reader a wonderful service.