Guidelines for producing documentation for expert systems

This article presents guidelines for the design and production of expert system user documentation. Expert system documentation shares many characteristics of documentation for any type of software. However, differences between traditional software and expert systems impact documentation efforts. The increased complexity of expert systems demands more attention to human-factor design issues. In addition, the iterative nature of expert system development requires increased flexibility and testing. The guidelines detailed in this article are based on the author's assignment to design and produce user documentation for an expert system.