Paper and online documentation trade-offs

This article explains the relative merits of paper and online documentation from a usability perspective.

First we look at the different types of user. Then we look at typical paper documentation and online documentation with respect to these user types. Finally, we present the relative merits of paper and online documentation for various user types.

User types

The table shows a broad grading of users and their needs. Each category applies to both the operating system and the software application (or rather, its underlying subject matter). For example, an expert who is using your software for the first time may have no experience of Microsoft Windows.

Types of user and their typical needs
User type	Comment
Absolute beginners	Require handholding, no assumptions, simple step-by-step instructions. Many pictures. Just one method of obtaining a required result.
Novice	Require handholding, no or few assumptions, simple step-by-step instructions (but less detail than absolute beginners). Encouragement to learn alternative methods.
Competent	Require brief reminders, explanations of options, alternatives, comparisons with other methods.
Advanced	Require brief reminders, tradeoffs, alternatives, minimum text and few screen shots. Obscure functions, oddities, shortcuts.

Typical paper documentation

Examples of paper documentation
Type	Typical Users	Advantages and disadvantages to users
Reference book	Advanced	Typically uses structural description. Often focuses on how and what to do, not why. Most material is rarely used, but it needs to be available.
Introduction / Welcome guide	All	Useful for setting the context. Likely to be redundant as soon as user is familiar with the software.
User Guide	Beginner, competent	To be useful to novices, must set the context, and make everything clear. No or few assumptions, and thus quite verbose. May become redundant quite rapidly.
Quick Reference / Checklist	Competent, advanced	Compact. Users must know what they want to do before they can use these.

Typical online documentation

Examples of online documentation
Type	Typical Users	Advantages and disadvantages to users
Online manual	Novice, competent, advanced	Easy to search on keywords (but not concepts). Those users who want a paper copy must print one themselves.
Context-sensitive (window-level)	Novice, competent, advanced	Typically, when a user calls the help, the help topic describes the functions of the buttons and entry boxes in the dialog or window from which the help was called. This is excellent for reference information, but it is not particularly useful for getting the global picture. A major problem is that a single procedure typically spans many dialog boxes, and often, one dialog box may be used in many procedures. Additional help topics are needed to explain processes, procedures, and concepts, and of necessity, they usually cannot be context sensitive.
Popup help (What's This? help, field-level help)	Novice, competent, advanced	Can be useful as a brief localised reminder. However, it is often a waste of time. Typical example: an entry box says 'Name' and the help says 'Enter the name here'. Very poor for explaining the general picture. Information should be replicated in Help Topics window or HTML-based help, because otherwise it is cumbersome to print many items.
Online video	Novice, competent	Shows users how, but needs to be high quality and clear. (Implementation requires considerable memory.) Operations must be fairly slow. Useful for beginners, but probably not so good for advanced users because a sequence of menu options is far faster to read. Mouse clicks and keyboard entry of non-printing characters is not explicit.
Computer Based Training (CBT)	Novice	Useful in training environments where users don't expect to perform useful work. Might be hard to persuade users to work through material.

Relative merits of paper and online documentation

A comparison of the attributes of paper and online documents
Attribute	Comment
Portability	Major advantage of paper over online is that it is portable.
Availability	Major advantage of online is that it is always available to all users whenever it is needed (except if the computer system itself is not available). Online is not always practical: installation instructions and release notes should be available before a software product is installed.
User friendliness	Depends on user preferences. Ideally, documentation should cater for both users who want online documentation, and those who want paper. Many users will print the documentation, or sections of it, and then read the hard copy. That can be seen as dumping a production problem on the user.
Ease of use	Online is excellent for brief reminders, but not good for extended explanations (that is, anything more than a few paragraphs). Most users are familiar with books. Some users are not familiar with online help. If the online help is in a separate window from the application, the help can be obscured when the user performs a procedure. If the help is always on top, it can get in the way of performing the procedure. With small screens this will always be a problem. Ease of use also depends on a user's subjective feelings and preferences about documentation. A general problem with online help is that absolute beginners won't know how to use it.
Readability	Reading paper is approximately 30% faster than reading from screen. For a given size of text, paper is clearer than online. Online documentation is not good for extensive reading.
Cross-referencing	Online is much faster (click on link rather than look up page). Tends to be more links (cross references) in online than on paper. Users can lose their location in the document structure.
Accessibility of content	No difference for people with a full range of abilities. However, people with sight problems can increase the size of text or use screen readers, so online is better for them. The ability to search an online document does not necessarily improve the ability to find information, although it can increase the speed for indexed terms. An author-generated A to Z index is as useful in online material as it is in printed documentation, because a keyword search is not sufficient. A table of contents is required in both cases to the show general structure of information.