Online Help is the New Three-Ring Binder

I think tech writers hold themselves back with rigid definitions of what tech writing is. When I first started, the three-ring binder was the de facto standard for document distribution. Convincing people to move to PDF distribution was painful and split documentation teams. I've seen churches split with less emotion.

After fourteen years, I hear the same arguments, but it's as if the tech writing gods performed a find-and-replace to substitute "three-ring binder" with "online help".

Instead of fighting the concept of going online, online help proponents are fighting anything that moves user documentation out of the software system help paradigm. An argument presented to me yesterday claimed users don't want their help to look like Amazon.com. Amazon is very usable and most people can find what they want within seconds. I'm not sure the same could be said for many online help systems.

Whether help writers want it to happen or not, online information continues to evolve. Users are used to searching and accessing what they want quickly. Information must be accessible in every conceivable way. Web technology can help information be all things for all people.

The future of online help will be in "help hubs". These will be websites that converge wikis, social networking, Google-quality searches, linking to related content based on behavior, integration with user communities, and anything else that gets information to the users. Users don't limit themselves to the same constraints that help writers want them to have. They get their information from a lot more places than a help file.