Usability of Software Online Documentation: A User Study Abbas Moallem, Ph.D. PeopleSoft, Inc. 4460 Hacienda Drive Pleasanton, CA 94588-8618 Abbas_moallem@PeopleSoft.Com Abstract This paper discusses the usability of online documentation and summarizes the results of two usability surveys conducted to study the usability of online documentation for enterprise applications. Two groups of subjects were surveyed using paper questionnaires. The results show that users generally use documentation when they hit a roadblock. Even though the preference is for online documentation (49%), but the subjects like to use paper documentation 32% of the time. This paper analyzes user preferences and their current difficulties in using online documentation. 1 Introduction Advances in the computer technology ― more powerful computers, more complex applications and ultimately the Internet and Web browsers ― have fundamentally changed the way people read, write and search for information. In the software industry the transition from the traditional way of delivering information by hard copy heavy manuals to soft copy, online documentation and online help appeared very fast. There are several advantages related to this method of delivering information. The ecological benefits include less paper thus less waste and the economical advantages include easy transfer, easy access to the information, easy maintenance and update. Although most software companies now offer online documentation, much online documentation offers little more than paper documentation displayed on the computer screens. Paper documentations are not designed for viewing on a small computer display. Thus, putting documentation online by itself does not improve its use or its usefulness. Online documentation uses the computer as a communication medium. It has two essential components. The first component is the content stored electronically. The second is the way for users to quickly and easily access that information. Thus there are two areas that usability is important in the online documentation. The usability of content: text picture, graphics and the usability of delivering techniques such as content, index, search engine and navigational tools. Several common types of error have been reported in writing user-friendly documentation. Weis (1991) summarizes these common errors in the following manner. First strategic, that includes searching several books, needing two books for one task, needing to ignore most pages. Second is structural, the problem such as jumping from front to back, never reading pages in sequence, searching for exhibits, tables. And the third type of common errors according to Weis is tactical. This includes: stopping to notice mechanical errors, getting stuck on inconsistent terminology, rereading difficult passages. To provide user-friendly design solutions in delivering and designing