It’s all about the User Experience (UX)…
For this reason, I am a major fan of MadCap Flare. I recommend this extremely robust, customizable Content Management System to all my clients when they need to output a mixture of shared and unique content to multiple audiences. The graphic design capabilities are incredible as well. I’ve replicated gorgeous designs from InDesign in MadCap Flare. And I recommend their Getting Started documentation as the gold standard for what end user documentation should be.
What Makes Outstanding Documentation?
Technical documentation must meet the needs of the audience. The best documentation enhances the user experience and is:
- accurate
- easy to find
- easy to understand
- describes the tasks the user must perform
- provides solutions to those frustrating problems that make us turn to the documentation in the first place.
What’s Great About the MadCap Flare Documentation?
- Text chunking makes the material easy to absorb
- Navigation is excellent—easy to understand, with an easy-to-follow tree hierarchy, with concepts organized into task-based sections
- Introductory material is provided in both text and video format, and the videos are very appealing and engaging
- The language is simple and easy to understand, even when explaining complicated concepts
- As a marketing tool, this URL makes a very complex, robust Content Management System seem non-intimidating and easy to use. For users of the software, this is a great starting point for learning basics, and even experts may return to this material for foundational concepts.