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Ask Slashdot: Should You Invest In Documentation, Or UX?

Posted by timothy on from the ask-your-users dept.

New submitter fpodoo writes "We are going to launch a new version of Odoo, the open source business apps suite. Once a year we release a new version and all the documentation has to be rewritten, as the software evolves a lot. It's a huge effort (~1000 pages, 250 apps) and it feels like we are building on quicksand. I am wondering if it would be better to invest all our efforts in R&D on improving the user experience and building tools in the product to better help the user. Do you know any complex software that succeeded in avoiding documentation by having significantly improved usability? As a customer, how would you feel with a very simple product (much simpler than the competition but still a bit complex) that has no documentation?"

6 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. False dichotomy. by aeschinesthesocratic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Invest in both.

    1. Re:False dichotomy. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Funny

      Invest in both.

      You should go into management. Then you can bring world class excellence to any organization, simply by making everything a top priority.

  2. You're doing it wrong. by seebs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have to rewrite all your documentation, you've done something horribly wrong.

    Suggestion: Consider focusing on stability for a while, because stability is a huge win for user experience.

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
    1. Re: You're doing it wrong. by fpodoo8256 · · Score: 5, Informative

      We actually have four documentations: developers, community (how to contribute), designers (how to develop theme), users (accountant, crm, point of sale, ecommerce, ...) The first three are stable enough and we will for sure invest in a great documentation. But the latest, the business apps, will evolve a lot in the coming months as they are plenty of areas to improve. My question relates only to the user documentation. For developers and designers, we more or less freeze the api/interfaces.

    2. Re: You're doing it wrong. by seebs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am pretty sure that that is exactly the wrong thing, then, because the entire point of "business apps" is that people are supposed to be able to build a stable operation on them. If you are changing things so much that you have to rewrite the documentation entirely, that means you are changing them so much that anyone using the software must completely redo their entire process, retrain anyone using the system, and so on.

      That's way too much change. If you are changing things enough that you are rewriting documentation every release, then you are not "evolving".

      --
      My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  3. UX? Meh. I have enough experiences in life by caseih · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All this talk in recent years about UX as in "experience" drives me up the wall. Talk about euphemism! Why can't we go back to calling it what it is: user interface?