Robert Desprez Communications

Why are Technical Writers Slow to Embrace Mobile?

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Now that Android is the lead­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem used to con­nect to the Inter­net, tech­ni­cal writ­ers need to seri­ous­ly look at how their con­tent is being dis­played on smart­phones and tablets.

For years, smart­phone and tablet use has sky­rock­et­ed.  In 2016, the num­ber of smart­phone users was expect­ed to sur­pass 2 bil­lion (source: eMar­keter). Sim­i­lar­ly, there were about 1 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide in 2015 who used a tablet at least month­ly (source: eMar­keter). In the last few weeks, Android has edged out Win­dows as the num­ber one oper­at­ing sys­tem used to access the Inter­net.

Mean­while, tech­ni­cal writ­ers appear to be slow to embrace mobile. The Con­tent Wran­gler web site com­plet­ed a study last year of more than 700 tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als. The sur­vey found that 91 per­cent of firms sur­veyed pub­lish con­tent to the web. But only 24 per­cent of tech­ni­cal writ­ers pub­lish con­tent that would be con­sid­ered “mobile ready.”

Sur­prised? I am not.  Although tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­fer­ences are brim­ming with ideas about get­ting your con­tent ready for mobile, we are not embrac­ing the idea. You can­not blame the author­ing tools either. In the last few years, Help Author­ing Tools have pro­vid­ed new and for­ward-think­ing fea­tures that make it easy to cre­ate Respon­sive HTML5 and EPUB files. With Robo­Help, you can even cre­ate a mobile app that con­tains online help (I explain the basics of cre­at­ing a mobile app in a sep­a­rate blog post). In addi­tion, these tools are rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive: you can pur­chase some of them on a month­ly sub­scrip­tion basis.

So why are more than 75 per­cent of tech­ni­cal writ­ers not writ­ing con­tent that is mobile ready? Here’s one guess: for all the talk about Dar­win Infor­ma­tion Typ­ing Archi­tec­ture (DITA), writ­ing con­tent for mobile, con­tent man­age­ment, and social media, there are still a lot of com­pa­nies that are using old approach­es and old tools, such as Microsoft Word, to write tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The Con­tent Wran­gler study appears to sup­port this the­o­ry with 49% of com­pa­nies sur­veyed still craft­ing print deliverables—just like it was done 20 years ago.

What do you think?

Which Output to Create: HTML5 or a Mobile App?

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New Help Author­ing Tools can cre­ate out­put files, such as HTML5 Help, mobile apps, and EPUB files. In this blog post, I am going to touch on what I see are the strengths of HTML5 Help and mobile apps.

First, some def­i­n­i­tions are in order. A mobile appli­ca­tion, most com­mon­ly referred to as an app, is a type of appli­ca­tion soft­ware designed to run on a mobile device, such as a smart­phone or a tablet com­put­er. HTML5 is a markup lan­guage used for struc­tur­ing and pre­sent­ing con­tent on the World Wide Web and is sup­port­ed by all mod­ern browsers. When I refer to HTML5 Help, I am refer­ring to a help project that can be viewed on com­put­ers, tablets, and smartphones.

The fol­low­ing image shows a screen cap­ture of an app for a fic­ti­tious prod­uct called InfoPath.

Mobile_app_example

The next image shows an HTML5 Help project that is dis­played on a computer.

HTML5_example

Strengths of Creating an App

  • The pop­u­lar­i­ty of apps is unde­ni­able. Eighty-five per­cent of users said they pre­fer using apps com­pared to mobile web sites. In addi­tion, users are spend­ing more time using apps—an increase of 21 per­cent in 2015 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. Source: Business2Community
  • Ide­al for users who have an inter­mit­tent con­nec­tion to the Inter­net: Once the app is installed on a smart­phone or tablet, it no longer requires a wire­less or mobile con­nec­tion to view the con­tent. In con­trast, HTML5 Help sys­tems require a brows­er, which usu­al­ly needs an Inter­net con­nec­tion to view the con­tent (although some browsers, such as Google Chrome, can run in offline mode).
  • Speed: Users will get the answers they need faster using an app ver­sus launch­ing a brows­er, nav­i­gat­ing to your help page, and wait­ing for the con­tent to appear.
  • High­er vis­i­bil­i­ty: An app is installed on a user’s smart­phone or tablet, mak­ing it easy to locate and launch. In con­trast, an online help sys­tem is typ­i­cal­ly includ­ed in a soft­ware pack­age and may not be easy to find or open.
  • Easy to cre­ate: I’ve cre­at­ed apps in Robo­Help (2015 release) and FrameMak­er (2015 release). Once you have per­formed some con­fig­u­ra­tion steps in both pro­grams, cre­at­ing an app is straight­for­ward.  Note: If you plan to cre­ate iOS appli­ca­tions, you need to pur­chase an Apple devel­op­er account for $99 US per year.

Aside the pre­vi­ous list, there are oth­er issues to con­sid­er, such as how will your app be dis­trib­uted to users so they can view your content.

Strengths of HTML5 Help

  • HTML5 Help auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjusts to the user’s screen: Respon­sive HTML5 Help changes the way the con­tent is pre­sent­ed, based on the device the user is using. For exam­ple, when view­ing con­tent on a PC, a user sees online help with a tra­di­tion­al lay­out while some­one using a smart­phone will see a table of con­tents that is opti­mized for touch. Respon­sive HTML5 Help auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjusts to the user’s screen and adjusts to dynam­ic screen size changes, such as a flip of the ori­en­ta­tion or resiz­ing of the brows­er. As a tech­ni­cal writer, you can author new con­tent or take your lega­cy con­tent and quick­ly out­put it so that it can be viewed on PCs, Macs, and smart­phones and tablets run­ning iOS and Android.

responsive-devices

Source for image: http://techwhirl.com/adobe-technical-communication-suite-2015-release-profile/)

  • Low learn­ing curve: A tech­ni­cal writer cre­ates Respon­sive HTML5 Help in much the same way as tra­di­tion­al help projects, such as Web­Help or Microsoft HTML Help. For any writer that has cre­at­ed online help in the past, cre­at­ing respon­sive HTML5 Help is straight­for­ward. In con­trast, cre­at­ing a mobile app requires some addi­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tion steps, includ­ing pur­chas­ing an Apple devel­op­er account for iOS applications.
  • Con­sis­tent user expe­ri­ence across plat­forms: When using FrameMak­er or Robo­Help (2015 releas­es), one of the ben­e­fits of respon­sive HTML5 Help is it enables users to expe­ri­ence a sim­i­lar help system—including brand­ing and cor­po­rate col­ors that you can eas­i­ly customize—across devices. Whether your users are run­ning a PC, Mac, smart­phone, or tablet, the respon­sive HTML5 Help pro­vides a con­sis­tent user experience.

 

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290