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Home > Development: Our approach
We Design and Develop User Assistance for Software Products and Corporate Services
 Work Write, Inc. specializes in the design and development of integrated user assistance - online help, electronic books, support websites and intranets, training support - anything you need to support users in learning to apply your products or services to performing their jobs.
We believe that assistance should be an integral part of the product or service you're creating - that it should be a planned aspect of not just the user interface but the functioning of the application right from the beginning of product development. Developing assistance that's integrated into the product results in subject matter, work, and product knowledge that's never more than a keystroke away. In fact, in many cases, we see to it that assistance is so well integrated that the user never has to ask for it.
Whether you're looking for assistance creating a prototype or start-to-finish development of your user assistance strategy, Work Write, Inc. promises close attention to the needs of your users and business goals, as well as superior crafted work.
Our development specialties
- Embedded help and user assistance for software applications. We believe that user assistance should be an active part of the user interface and functioning of a software application. For this reason, we focus on developing forms of user assistance that are present but natural aspects of the software. We also believe that embedded assistance should support the user's performance in his or her job, not simply convey information about how the product works.
- Microsoft HTML Help and Microsoft Help 2.0 development. We're among the nation's leading developers of Microsoft Help systems. In fact, Work Write, Inc. President Cheryl Lockett Zubak is one of the charter members of the Microsoft help MVP program, and her partner Ralph Walden was the lead architect for HTML Help while he worked at Microsoft. We're technicians as well as designers, and we've been involved in HTML Help development since the very beginning.
- Help for the Web. Help for the Web is that it has specific requirements that are quite different from their desktop counterparts. Online help for the Web and for weblications (web-based applications) must be highly customized, natural to the user (no Web user goes to help on purpose), and is often experimental in design - rather like the Web itself.
- Windows help (WinHelp) development. If it seems a little strange to be talking about "good old WinHelp" on the same page as embedded and HTML-based user assistance, think again. WinHelp is still a primary method for developing online help systems. We've been developing WinHelp since it was born, and we continue to support it as an important technology for creating online help, cue cards, tips, and similar types of user assistance.
- Step by step user's guides and courseware (hardcopy or PDF formats). Most users are expected to get up to speed on software products without traditional training. For this reason, we develop user's and training guides that walk the user step-by-step through the process of using your product. We also develop job aids, reference cards, and other sorts of materials.
We develop documentation in our own offices in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (suburban Philadelphia), where we put to use the latest tools and technologies to create polished, innovative documentation.
User assistance design and strategy
Do you need help with issues like these?
- Your help system needs a facelift, but you just don't have the time to do it. You want to work with someone who won't just provide a creative design, but who will develop a polished design that will work with your processes and can also teach you how to implement it.
- You have a good good idea what you want your online help to look like, but you aren't sure which tools will support your design and your authoring process. To make matters worse, very few of the authoring tool vendors provide a trial version of their software that you can use to "try out" the product.
- You've been creating WinHelp systems or printed documentation but know that the time for HTML-based assistance is approaching. But you aren't sure how to move forward. Which HTML-based help development environment is best? What tools should you use? Should you redesign your help system when you convert it to HTML?
- You're ready for a facelift of your online help system. In fact, you think it may need more than a face life. You need an evaluation of your current online information and detailed recommendations on improvements.
- You've been developing print-based information, and are just moving to online help. You need assistance with developing. standards and style guidelines for your online documentation library.
These are among the types of problems we've helped companies to resolve. Do you have an issue that doesn't fall into these general areas? Give us a call to talk it over. Chances are we've dealt with something like it before.
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