Consider How Your Help Is Accessed

Providing useful information to the user requires considering the following:

• What confusing situation commonly arise? Specific help in these situations can save users lots of time.

• Why is the user asking for help now instead of earlier or later? If there are several steps in a process and the user is not at the first step, branch to information that is specific to the step being done. This is more helpful than displaying the same information at each step. If the user is at the first step, make available both detailed information about the first step and an overview of all the steps.

• Is the user requesting context-specific help or just browsing the help information? If it is context-specific, supply information that's relevant to the task now being done.