[Sigia-l] User tests for help documentation

[Elizabeth Stevens]

Dear Specialists,

I'm relatively new to this community, so let me introduce myself.  My name 
is Liz, and I'm a green user experience intern for a software company. 
Although the company conducts user tests with its software, it currently 
relies on heuristic evaluations for help documentation.  They'd like to 
extend some user validation to the help documentation, and so I have been 
attempting to research methodologies.

I've found two lists of testing methods for documentation (I'll link them 
below), but I'd be more interested in your personal experiences.  What 
methods of help documentation testing do SIGIA members vouch for? Are some 
methods a waste of time?

Another fruitful route might be advice from the famous usability gurus that 
I am unaware of.  Absolutely any direction you could give me would help, 
because as I said, I'm new to the community.

Thanks for you time!
Liz

A few documentation testing methods:
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/resources/toolkit/documentation%20usability%20techniques.doc
http://www.uie.com/articles/documentation_help/