I believe that tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to think more and more about cre­at­ing online help for mobile devices as smart­phone sales sky­rock­et. Accord­ing to the Pew Research ser­vice, mobile devices will be the pri­ma­ry con­nec­tion tool to the Inter­net for most peo­ple by 2020.

With that in mind, I’ve start­ed read­ing more about cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile appli­ca­tions. Joe Welinske, the pres­i­dent of Writ­er­sUA, recent­ly wrote a series of webi­na­rs about mobile user assis­tance. I pur­chased the first webi­nar titled “UA in Mobile Plat­forms.” In it Welinske writes, “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing I have learned in my work with mobile apps is that bring­ing over Help designs from desk­top appli­ca­tions is a real­ly bad idea.”

So what are some good prac­tices for cre­at­ing help on mobile appli­ca­tions? As I am just learn­ing about the sub­ject myself, here are some rec­om­men­da­tions that I’ve gleaned. One real­ly good arti­cle on the sub­ject is “A User-Cen­tered Approach to Web Design For Mobile Devices” by Lyn­don Cere­jo. Here are some of Cerejo’s and Welinske’s rec­om­men­da­tions that can be applied to help:

Design for a small screen size

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is not one stan­dard screen size (this reminds me of the brows­er wars from years ago). To com­pli­cate mat­ters, some phones can change ori­en­ta­tion and users expect the web site to resize accordingly.

Simplify navigation

• Reduce the num­ber of cat­e­gories and lev­els of nav­i­ga­tion, and rearrange con­tent based on pri­or­i­ty, pre­sent­ing the most impor­tant cat­e­gories first.
• Use clear, con­cise and con­sis­tent labels for nav­i­ga­tion across the site.
• When design­ing for touch, make sure the tap size (width or height) for the nav­i­ga­tion item is at least 30 pixels.
• Bread­crumbs are usu­al­ly not used on mobile sites since nav­i­ga­tion is not usu­al­ly so deep that users need a trail back.
• Make links obvi­ous, and pro­vide clear and imme­di­ate visu­al feed­back to show the select­ed link.
• Be suc­cinct because of the small screen size.
• Use short and descrip­tive titles for your pages.
• If you must include scrolling, scroll in only one direc­tion. Most mobile sites scroll vertically.

Design for intermittent connectivity

Cell phone com­pa­nies are offer­ing faster net­works but it doesn’t mean the ser­vice is always avail­able. And not all users have unlim­it­ed data plans. So make sure that pages can be loaded quick­ly on a mobile device, and that images are rel­a­tive­ly small.

Search and indexes

Welinske believes index­ing and search tech­niques are of less use in mobile appli­ca­tions. “If a user needs to search for Help con­tent, then the user assis­tance is far too large.”

Design for a distracted user

Cere­jo argues that you can­not con­trol where cus­tomers will use the phone or even how it will be used. Here’s a quote from his arti­cle: “Pic­ture a mobile user try­ing to find direc­tions using a tiny phone with inter­mit­tent con­nec­tiv­i­ty, while strap hang­ing and sway­ing in a sub­way train with sub-opti­mal light­ing con­di­tions, deaf­ened by the screech­ing of wheels on tracks — that gives you some con­text of use. Sim­ply put, con­text is about the envi­ron­ment and con­di­tions of usage, includ­ing dis­trac­tions, mul­ti­task­ing, motion, light­ing con­di­tions and poor connectivity.”

Summary

In the next decade, most peo­ple will be using their cell phones to con­nect to the Inter­net. If this pre­dic­tion holds true, tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to mas­ter deliv­er­ing help on smart­phones too. It will be an excit­ing and chal­leng­ing ride.