3 ms·

I don't agree with: > "What are FAQs?" "FAQs are a way to show you've thought about what your users should know but haven't thought about your users." Every F

I don't agree with: > "What are FAQs?" "FAQs are a way to show you've thought about what your users should know but haven't thought about your users." Every FAQ I've ever written has been literally a Frequently Asked Question. If I notice users asking the same question, I add it to the FAQ. I also try to think about how I could make the process simpler so that they don't need to ask that question in the future, but sometimes that's just not possible. Most of my FAQs are also covered in the manual I provide with my software, but who ever reads a manual?

shikoba 5y ago
Maybe FAQs are just a simplified manual. Those are often missing. I don't want to read a 30 pages manual before using something.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Unlike a simplified manual, FAQs should cover common edge cases. Things which would look like details and don't clearly fit into the manual's sections.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > FAQs should cover common edge cases. If these cases are common, they are not edge cases, and they should be described in the actual documentation, guides etc.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  No its not. I have simplified manual too and a FAQ. Simplified manual shows most important things. FAQ doesn't have to, users can frequently ask totally unimportant things.
dash2 5y ago
Doesn't a manual also show you've thought about what your users should know, but not about your users?
mst 5y ago
I often find that I (and my users) get more value out of a document structured around Frequently Delivered Answers, since it often turns out a bunch of questions end up leading to the same underlying issue. Generally the answers in question are documented in more than one place already, but no matter how many times one restructures documentation there will still be people who end up with a mistake in their conceptual model that means they're looking in all the wrong places (or if you -do- manage to accrue documentation that covers all of the conceptual models you encounter, often you find you now have a percentage of users who get lost because of how -much- documentation there is, so I've largely resigned myself to there being no such thing as a perfect job there, only incremental improvement as time allows). I suspect this is much more true of programming projects than it is of the gov.uk websites though.

shikoba 5y ago

Maybe FAQs are just a simplified manual. Those are often missing. I don't want to read a 30 pages manual before using something.

akvadrako 5y ago
Unlike a simplified manual, FAQs should cover common edge cases. Things which would look like details and don't clearly fit into the manual's sections.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > FAQs should cover common edge cases. If these cases are common, they are not edge cases, and they should be described in the actual documentation, guides etc.
majkinetor 5y ago
No its not. I have simplified manual too and a FAQ. Simplified manual shows most important things. FAQ doesn't have to, users can frequently ask totally unimportant things.

dash2 5y ago

Doesn't a manual also show you've thought about what your users should know, but not about your users?

mst 5y ago

I often find that I (and my users) get more value out of a document structured around Frequently Delivered Answers, since it often turns out a bunch of questions end up leading to the same underlying issue. Generally the answers in question are documented in more than one place already, but no matter how many times one restructures documentation there will still be people who end up with a mistake in their conceptual model that means they're looking in all the wrong places (or if you -do- manage to accrue documentation that covers all of the conceptual models you encounter, often you find you now have a percentage of users who get lost because of how -much- documentation there is, so I've largely resigned myself to there being no such thing as a perfect job there, only incremental improvement as time allows). I suspect this is much more true of programming projects than it is of the gov.uk websites though.