Wednesday, March 2, 2011

User help in MS Office

A few weeks ago I upgraded to MS Office 2010. In general Microsoft has done a pretty good job with the 2010 release of office. But one thing remains a problem, namely the help engine. In fact, it turns out that if you ask your search question on Google, you get MUCH better results than going through the Office help system.

Online help is a problem with many products; but it is a little unexpected that Google serves up significantly better results that the native tool. It just shows the power of the community. I have long though that all application help systems should be collaborative (and moderated to remove the inevitable trash that collects). You might call it a "crowd sourced" model for  help. But by collecting and harnessing input from real users, the quality of the application help will rapidly improve for the benefit of all users.

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