writethedocs-humantesting

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writethedocs-humantesting ________________________________

Human testing documentation
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"You need to speak to the users and get feedback"
For this, you need infrastructure

Direct USER TESTING / Usability testing
"Give them tasks + just sit next to them + collect feedback"
and then work on it, try to improve it
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Organise an event + try it with local user groups

Look at metrics:
    look at how often pages are opened
    when was a piece last updated?
You see how important a topic is
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Use [google] analytics, look at bounce rates: low is good (30 seconds): "a developer found what they were looking for"

Stars / ratings:
    are difficult
    and annoying
    rating works on StackOverflow !!

"Track support calls"
Put metrics in place - did a change in documentation lead to less questions?
(not possible for small project)

A/B testing
Generative documentation

Problem tracking
How problems express:
    Stack Overflow !!
    UserVoice
    your mailing list / user group
    IRC channels
    ...
Collect + Converge
Measure of quality : Make sure the top answer is from/on your docs now!
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Mozilla tracks Twitter for feedback via base URLs:
    "this documents sucked"
    "this was really helpful"

General priority equation for documents
Can be implemented as an algorithm / visualisations / priority list for improvement
Document importantce:
    site hits
    specific questions
    google position
    ask people
    twitter
Document quality:
    ratings
    bounce times
    asking people / direct user testing
    last update time = "radioactivity of docs"
    number of edits + users editing
    tracking support calls
Data mining / secondary measures:
    look at best documents -> who are the users that edited that?
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Infrastructure for this:
    per-page analytics
    deep analytics / Piwik:
        google does hot areas too
Which doc platforms support this next level features?

To improve the original reference docs
Encourage translators to improve it when they translate

Tracking coverage:
    via source code
    make a list of features

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Using tags / community tagging docs

How to prioretise what to improve
Importance (via metrics) + Quality

Plone improvement strategy:
    track if questions on StackOverflow are answered or not