Structured heuristic evaluation of online documentation

Increasingly, online documentation is the only documentation that companies provide with their products. As printing and publishing costs rise, and as help systems become more robust, PDFs and online help systems are replacing printed user guides and reference manuals. To minimize customer resistance to this change and encourage use of online documentation, the online documentation must be at least as easy to use as a printed book. This paper presents a structured process for evaluating the usability of online documentation, based on a list of heuristics for navigating through and finding content.