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It all comes down to the familiarity of the audience with the interface. The words of a procedure describe parts of the interface. Will the audience immediately recognize which parts of the interfa...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23390 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T03:27:17Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23390 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T03:27:17Z (about 5 years ago)
It all comes down to the familiarity of the audience with the interface. The words of a procedure describe parts of the interface. Will the audience immediately recognize which parts of the interface those words refer to? If yes, then screenshots are unnecessary and will simply slow the reader down. If no, then you need a way to show the reader which part of the interface the words refer to, and a screenshot is one way to do that. As computers have become more ubiquitous, interfaces have become more standardized, and people do more and more activities on the computer, people have become more familiar with interfaces and thus more likely to recognize what the words in the procedure refer to. Thus we have more shortcuts like File \> Print, because people now know what that means. There is a universal phenomena here: as products become ubiquitous and users become experienced with them, the need for documentation diminishes, and may eventually disappear altogether. Thousands of products ship with no documentation other than that demanded by lawyers. It is all about where your product fits on the familiarity scale with its intended audience. This affects far more than just the decision about screenshots. But there are still specific cases in which the audience may not know what the words in the procedure mean. If the audience is inexperienced or the interface is non-standard, the reader may not recognize what the words mean and you should use screen shots. In some cases, there may be small parts of the interface that are non-standard, meaning you should use screenshots for those parts and not for others. In short, therefore, use them where you anticipate that a significant portion of you audience may need them, and otherwise not.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-06-16T13:27:50Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 5