Re: SIGIA-L: Value of competency levels

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Stephen,

I'm sure there is value in establishing thresholds for competency level
categories; however, if your going to invest a lot of time/effort upfront to
profile user types you might as well also make the technical documentation
"speak for itself"

Example: Sun's Java product information online (tutorials/APIs)
[java.sun.com]

Roughly speaking, the tutorials are relatively "novice to intermediate"
status while the API's are "intermediate to advanced". Allow the user to
gauge his/her own level of competency based on the task they hope to
accomplish with your product. This means chunking competency within scope of
the user's interest.

If you navigate the tutorial documentation for specific info like
javax.swing.JTextField, you'll notice how it provides:

[novice] conceptual chunks (like what the purpose of the object is, common
contextual uses and how it produces a solution)

[intermediate] example chunks (properties of the object, methods etc in
code-ready cut/paste form)

[~advanced] links to other chunks (other objects that relate to this object
and API info).

-eddie
http://www.mrnovelty.com/

on 10/9/01 3:07 PM, stephen gilson at stephengilson_at_yahoo.com wrote:

I'd like to get some feedback on the notion of organizing technical product
content around competency levels, i.e., 'novice, intermediate, advanced.'
Can anyone point me to any research done on the effectiveness of this
practice?
 
Presumably, there would be some means for a site visitor to identify the
competency level of him or herself. I'm wondering whether you risk obscuring
information by grouping content in this way.
 
sg
 
 
stephengilson_at_yahoo.com
information architect, macromedia, inc.
epage: 5084794019_at_msg.myvzw.com

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