Inside Macintosh: Apple Guide Complete / Part 2 - Building Guide Files

Chapter 6 - Testing Your Guide File

Planning for User Testing

As with any product, you should plan for and conduct user testing of your guide file. Users can give valuable feedback as to the usefulness of your guide file. For example, you can ask users the following:

• Are the topic areas relevant and complete?
• Are the topics you are looking for available from the access window?
• Is the level of instruction appropriate?
• Are instructions clear and easy to follow?
• Is the use of navigation buttons and content area buttons clear and consistent?
• Did the guide file help you perform a task? If not, why not?
• Is the index complete?
• Do searches give the expected result?
• Are any topic areas or topics not covered?

You should plan to do user testing early enough in your design process so that you can incorporate feedback. For additional information on conducting user testing, see the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.