To make the right content choices, first ask these high-level questions:
Who is the intended audience?
What is the user’s goal? What is the user trying to accomplish?
What is your goal for providing the content?
What type of content will best meet the user’s needs and your objectives?
Will a user access the content from a desktop, phone or other mobile device, a console—or all of these?
Will the content be translated or localized? For more information, see Chapter 3.
How will the user find the content?
How will success be measured?
What are the budget and schedule constraints?
Your answers to these questions will help narrow your options so that you can focus on the best approaches for your user. For example, you might decide that either text or video would be appropriate for your user, but you know that your content will be localized into at least five languages, and you have a small initial budget for the project. Creating and localizing high-quality video is expensive, so you might choose text as the best choice to begin with and then, as you measure the text’s success, you might be able to justify the larger investment in localized video.
Use the following table to help choose the type of web content to create:
If your user needs | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
Procedure with screen shots: Remove a page break Screen-capture video with audio: Search or move around in a document using the navigation pane | ||
To learn about a complex task or a feature in an application | Screen-capture video, with or without audio Procedural text with screen shots Procedural text with embedded screen-capture video | Video with audio: Protecting a Word document with AD RMS Procedure with screen shots: Add or remove text effects Procedure with screen-capture video: Create a theme End-to-end scenarios: |
Ongoing, regular communications from you | Blog Microblog (such as Twitter) Newsletter | OneNote, The Microsoft Office Blog; http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/ |
Ongoing engagement and participation with a like-minded community | Wiki Forum | Microsoft Answers; http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us |
To learn something complex that takes time and practice | ||
To learn high-level concepts about technology subjects | An Enterprise Approach to Gov 2.0. Microsoft download center: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/default.aspx Cloud Basics: Security in the Cloud. Microsoft download center: | |
Detailed information about a product or technology on an ongoing basis | The Crabby Office Lady Podcasts Microsoft SQL Azure Team Blog: | |
To learn tips and tricks | eBooks | eBook: Windows 7 Tips and Tricks:http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/default.aspx Microblog: FedDidUKnow: You can easily turn your #Access database #applications into #SharePoint 2010 applications. http://bit.ly/3UaScH #gov #governance |
To understand a complex or integrated feature or scenario | Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture (with Service Pack 1) | |
To learn complex troubleshooting or decision making processes |