UW-TC                                        TC310 Internship Program                            Autumn 2003

Assignment #7: Online Help 

Due: Tuesday, 18 November 2003

The assignment for this week is to convert a word document containing modular bits of information into a stand-alone help utility.  This assignment has come to us from the travel office, and concerns the same content you dealt with in Assignment 2.  The travel department was so happy with our work on that assignment that they came to us with their more recent concern. 

Our company (like most) has many rules about travel.  They have been distributed the information on paper (the document you formatted a month ago).  However, the team in the travel office thinks that no one is reading the document (e.g., they get questions that are clearly answered in the document).   When they have asked various employees about this – the employees have responded “it is not at my fingertips” and “I can never find what I am looking for.” 

In light of these findings, the travel office is seeking a way to put the travel information at the fingertips of the employees and to make the information highly searchable.  When the travel office came to me with my thoughts, I suggested that we turn the information into a standalone help utility that would sit on every employee’s computer desktop. 

The people in the travel office quickly bought into the idea and almost immediately sent over a word document containing a portion of the travel information.  Our job is to help them develop a stand-alone help utility for travel information, starting with the information that they sent over.

Specifically, I have told them that our first step will be to create three variations of the stand-alone help utility.  The implementations will differ primarily in how they organize the help topics.  Armed with these three implementations, we will be able to conduct usability tests to see which organization works best for the employees – but that’s for later.  Now, we just need to create three implementations of the help system.

Requirements:

Individual requirements:  The document we have received contains 21 chunks of information (we are lucky that we aren’t being asked to develop the content as well as the help system).  You should use RoboHELP and create a help system that satisfies the following minimum parameters:

- At least 21 topics

- At least 3 books

- At least 6 new index terms (at least 3 of which are linked to 2 or more topics)

- At least 3 inter-topic “jumps”

- At least 3 “popups”

- At least 1 embedded image

In developing the system, please use the text and labels that we have received from the travel office.  Even with using the pre-specified information, there are still many decisions involved in creating the help system.

Team requirements: There are no explicit team requirements for this assignment.  Each team member should create their own version of the help system.

Tips:

- One way to minimize difficulties in working with a program such as RoboHelp (essentially a programming environment) is to start small, relish small successes, and work up.

- You can generate various versions of your help system through the File>Generate menu option. 

- The information to be included in the help system is located on the course website.

Submission:

This assignment is due in E-Portfolio by the start of class on Tuesday, 11/18/03.  Each student will submit one file containing the help system, and the annotations indicated in E-portfolio. 

** Please refer to E-portfolio for specific details on the requested format for your Robohelp files and requested content in the key features annotation.