Great Abstract Writing: Improve Your Readers’ Access With A Visible Index
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- November 18th, 2008 |
- Comments
OVERVIEW
People are visible creatures. They look at your product, and accompany, for example, a button or display. They deprivation to find out about that control or indicator. A Visible Index is a simple but powerful document access means that enables your Readers to find the information that they deprivation.
This article describes the Visible Index concept and tells how to create one for your document.
A Visible INDEX
A Visible Index is a picture of your product or process with links to the relevant information in the related document. Exploitation a Visible Index, your Readers can look at the picture, and quickly jump to the place in your document that describes the item of interest.
Your document may include various Visible Indexes (the plural of “index’ is “indexes” not “indices”).
STARTS WITH A PICTURE
The Visible Index starts with a picture of your product or process. Thither are different kinds of pictures to consume, based on the product identify:
* Physical Product (for example, a barbecue or recording disk recorder)
Pictures of the product (all relevant views).
* A Procedure or Process: A flowchart of the stairs and decisions in the procedure or process.
* Code Product 1: Screenshots of the code.
* Code Product 2: Before and after images of the activity that the product does.
* Organization: An organization chart.
LABEL THE PICTURE
Label all the User-Product Interaction Points (U-PIP) on the picture. A U-PIP is anywhere that your Person and the product may interact. U-PIP’s include controls, displays, and relevant physical features of the product (much as handles, latches, etc.). Provide a meaningful (to your Reader) label (name) for the U-PIP. (Consume that same exact label everywhere you refer thereto U-PIP.)
Aside: If your product uses sounds to inform the Person, so include a table of those sounds, what they mean, and a link into the relevant area of your document (describing the channel).
LINK THE U-PIP’s TO YOUR DOCUMENT
Capable this point, the Visible Index is just like any well-labeled picture of your product or process. However, when you add links into your document, the well-labeled picture becomes a Visible Index.
The link should be to a area of your document that you believe your reader would most deprivation to reach to get the information about that U-PIP. (This is a fundamental question whenever you create an index: “does my reader deprivation to come to this place in my document for this item?”)
Your method of adding links to the picture depends upon the publishing mechanism for the document. If the document is published as:
* A Printed document, so consume page numbers for the links;
* An Electronic Document, so consume hyperlinks that a Reader can click on to follow. If the document is published as HTML, so the visible index can be an image map.
EXAMPLE 1: A PAIN IN MY FOOT
I have a pain in my foot when I walk. If I go to a site about feet, it would be real efficient for finding out about my pain, if I could accompany a picture of a foot with different areas where the pain could be. Links from the foot areas to circumstantial blade pages would enable me to find the information about my circumstantial foot pain quickly.
EXAMPLE 2: PHOTO CORRECTING Code
Appear a picture with the errors that your code can handle, before and after correction. Here the U-PIP’s are each of the photo errors.
EXAMPLE 3: A COURSE ON WRITING Person DOCUMENTATION
The Visible Index is a flowchart for creating the Person Document. Since the Course is presented in HTML, the Visible Index is made from an image map, with hyperlinks into the sections of the Course relevant to each item in the flowchart.
BOTTOM LINE
A Visible Index is a simple concept. But like many simple concepts it is real powerful. Attempt to include one in your next document. You’ll be doing your Reader a great service.