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> Outdated screenshots can cause customers to lose trust in documentation accuracy. Do you have a source for this? I've not experienced similar feelings when l

• freetonik 3y ago
  Anecdotal, but I do feel this when reading documentation for commercial products. I start to wonder, often unconsciously, whether the documentation is outdated (so, following it may lead to an error), or there isn't a good cooperation between designers and documentation writers (and the possibility that those are different people/teams doesn't feel too well, either), or the UI changes very rapidly (so I can expect possibly unwanted changes once I learn something).
• smore 3y ago
  Thanks for reading! The source is my experience working in the industry and interacting with other technical writers and customer feedback submitted on doc pages, posted in Slack communities, and more. I've spent years reading comments from readers asking for updated documentation because it has a screenshot of a different UI than the one they use—even though the rest of the content is accurate. It's difficult to find published research about technical documentation because basically only Nielsen Norman Group is doing extensive research on web content. Baymard Institute, who I link to in the post, also does quite a bit of research but even more broadly and mostly on overall website and web marketing content.