Report from 5th March event, Self-service support starts in the UI

This was a joint event between the ISTC, Northern User Experience, and the Manchester Metropolitan University usability lab.
Rachel Potts of 3di Usability described findings and techniques she has used to improve the user experience of software. Techniques that apply equally whether you approach software from a documentation or user experience (UX) design point of view. Improvements in each of the five areas she looked at were backed up by solid evidence either from a usability lab or through technical support statistics. Of the five areas, the two that stood out to me were the focus on clear error messages and the idea that you should break the rules. After all, when are customers most likely to call Tech support? When they receive an error. A clear message can go a long way to helping them serve themselves. As for breaking the rules, users have become jaded over the years and have lost trust in standard help mechanisms, so the idea here is, if you are providing content that is truely useful, you now need to make it stand out in some way, perhaps by glowing or appearing in the UI instead of the help.
All in all, the evening was a resounding success for all parties. 3di who provided the refreshments, the ISTC who were exposed to several potential new members, MMU usability lab who met some of the movers and shakers from UX in the north of England, and myself who will be taking this experience back to my new challenge at AppSense and putting it into practice.
Thank you Rachel