Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
April/May 2012

February 2012 Meeting -- Thinking about User Assistance as Performance Support
Presented by Linda Urban and reviewed by Greg Hubbard

The Performance Support Perspective

As a technical communications professional, you may have already heard of performance support and wondered, “How is the idea of ‘performance support’ different from the user-centered work I’m doing now?” As explained by Linda Urban in her thought-provoking presentation, the concept of performance support is less a radically different approach than an expansion of the user assistance perspective.

The main idea behind performance support is that all of our efforts to assist users need to be focused on supporting performance. Linda gave the following examples of forms that performance support might take:

A job aid summarizing key steps that a user tapes to their cubicle.
A targeted application that helps the user accomplish a specific goal.
A portal that pulls together a collection of resources the user needs.

The idea of considering user assistance as performance support asks that we step back and examine the big picture to see what the users’ larger goals are, and then align our content to help them use our product to achieve those goals.

Making Users Successful

Understanding the user’s perspective more fully, including what they are trying to accomplish, is a major component of the performance support approach. We can use methods like surveys, forums, user groups, and site visits, to answer the question, “What are our users trying to achieve?” We can then use that information to more fully align our content with our users’ needs.

Get the context--Understand the users' work environment, their work, and their pain points, as well their abilities and attitudes.
Offer possibilities--Help them think about making effective use of the product in their work.
Provide examples--Use case studies and examples to help them relate the information to their situation and to their goals.

These evaluations should also help you determine which types of support are appropriate for your users:

External support--Users break away from their work to use the support (for example, a manual)
Extrinsic support--Available within the system, but not fully integrated (for example, an online help system)
Intrinsic support--Fully integrated (for example, context-sensitive help or a guided wizard)

Assessing Your Content

After you’ve gotten a deeper understanding of your users (and potential users), think about your current content and ask yourself whether it supports performance. Do a content audit to see if your current content meets performance support goals, such as:

Each topic has a clear purpose.
You understand why each topic matters to your users.
Each topic is aligned with user needs.

After the audit, ask yourself how your content would have to change to better support performance.

Striving for Company-Wide Integration

Another component of the performance support strategy is seeing user assistance as one part of a larger, integrated focus on helping users perform. Discover who else at your company is focused on supporting performance, and find formal and informal ways to bridge the gaps between departments so that the technical writing voice is integrated into the process at the early stages. These departments might include:

Training
HR
Customer/Tech support
Field Service
Engineering

Through these conversations you might discover that other departments aren’t fully aware of what you create, or you may discover a need to create different content altogether. You might also find that you need to develop different skills, or that the other departments don’t know about the skills you already have to offer, such as:

Analyzing for essentials
Interviewing
Looking at case studies
Documenting results

Reaping the Benefits

Ultimately, understanding performance support can help your career by helping to:

Relate/align your work to business needs
Increase your value and your visibility
Build bridges between the technical communication department and other groups
Expand opportunities to use your skills in additional areas

Linda closed by providing a list of references for those wanting to learn more about performance support.

Job Aids & Performance Support, by Allison Rossett & Lisa Schaffer (2007)
Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, by Thomas Gilbert (1978)
Fundamentals of Performance Technology, by D.M. Van Tiem et al. (2004)
Technical Communications, Volume 49, Number 4, November 2002 (special issue focused on performance support)
"Mapping Technical Communication to a Human Performance Technology Framework," by Michael Hughes, in Technical Communication, Volume 51, Number 3, August 2004