Document automation is not a new concept. Over the years companies have sought to free employees from the manual effort involved in creating standard documents, while maximising accuracy and reducing error. This led to the creation of custom applications. These applications were a step forward, but tended to suffer from design limitations and high maintenance costs, and typically lead you through the document’s requirements from top to bottom.
Clever document wizards, which ask users a series of questions and then modify a template accordingly, are a significant step forward to creating logical documents. But most of them still rely on the old ‘top down’ approach. They present questions to the user in the same order as the information will appear in the finished document.
Ridding ourselves of this old top-down way of thinking allows us to make document creation easier and more intuitive. You can focus on the important things first.
If you have to derail your train of thought to provide information you don’t think is important yet you are likely to provide as little info as possible, so you can get back on track and move to the parts you do consider important. According to Steve Krug†, when required to think about an answer, most people will provide no answer at all or the shortest possible answer. Simply re-ordering the questions can make it simpler to gather the required information, with less repetition and less thinking required – resulting in a higher quality document.
Ideally, wouldn’t it be better to begin with the thoughts the user will be thinking when they come to create a given document and work outwards, creating a logical flow of questions to follow? Mapping out this logical flow minimises the number of questions needed and means irrelevant questions can simply be left out. Organising questions so that they are in the most suitable order to follow enables you to create your document intuitively and quickly.
The completed document can be presented in the way that is best for the reader, probably the traditional top-down format – but the creation process is handled in the way that is best for the person creating the document. The two processes are removed from each other.
A document creation solution should allow you to create a ‘wizard’ that collects information in the most logical and efficient order, regardless of the order it may appear in the finished document. The end result is a document that is easy to build and easy to read, without anything important being accidentally left out.
Altogether it’s a more logical, more efficient and smarter way to work.
† Author of Don’t Make Me Think, http://www.sensible.com/