UI手册

An effective User Manual should help you:

-Gather information while reading

-Use the product successfully

An effective User Manual should have these attributes:

-Neatness

-Clarity and precision

-Consistency

-Zero defects


整洁(Neatness)
No one likes to read a badly formatted document.

The following makes up a good looking document:

-Good font-type and size

-Pleasant color

-Alignment

-Error free language

Some tips to keep your User Manual neat:

-Maintain one font-type acoss the User Manual.

-Set the Font Size to 14pts for the heading, and 12pts for the body text.

-Use fewer colors

-Never centre align the text/image. Keep it justified.

-Make sure error free in the sense.

More reference: http://business-writing.proof-reading.com/?p=20


清晰准确(Clarity and Precision)
To write good instructions:

-Keep your instructions short.

-Use the right terminology/word

-Bold the names of buttons/tabs/windows

-Number all actions but NOT expected results

-Specify both the action and the expected result

-Don't miss out on steps


一致性(Consistency)
Consistency is one thing which most people ignore while writing.

Voluminous User Manual written without consistency get the audience confused with 100% chance.

To maintain consistency:

-Make sure you write the names of buttons/tabs/windows exactly the way it appears in the product.

-Watch out for caseing issueshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

-Maintain one instruction structure for similar action.

Good reference link:http://www.ebstc.org/TechLit/plainall.html


零失误(Zero defects)
The key to an error free User Manual is continously review.

The best way to check your instructions is to read them yourself and perform the actions on the product.

It is always good to have a model while writting.(tone, text, terminology) This will help you stylize your User Manual in the right way. Microsoft products are good examples.

Checkpoint:

-Grammatical errors

-Casing issues

-Wrongly written instructions

-Bad formatting

-Wrong alignment

To chinese text, the spell, structure consistency, are especially important.

Recommendation: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/55/loanprocessing.html - Make sure you visit this!