How can you use cognitive walkthrough to improve technical documentation presentation usability?

1 Content quality

Ensuring the accuracy, relevance, conciseness, and consistency of your technical documentation is essential for meeting the needs and expectations of your target audience. You can use cognitive walkthrough to evaluate if your content provides enough information and examples, uses clear and simple language, and follows a logical structure and format. Ask yourself questions such as whether the content matches the user's goals and tasks, avoids unnecessary details or jargon, uses consistent terminology and formatting, and provides feedback and confirmation messages.

2 Navigation design

The navigation of your technical documentation should be intuitive, flexible, and responsive. You can use cognitive walkthrough to check if your navigation supports user orientation, exploration, and control, as well as offering multiple ways to access information and adapting to different devices and screen sizes. Additionally, it should follow common conventions and standards. To ensure this, ask yourself questions such as: does the navigation have a clear and visible hierarchy and labels? Does it offer search, filters, breadcrumbs, and other aids? Can users go back, forward, and skip steps? Does the navigation respond quickly and smoothly to user actions?

3 Layout and aesthetics

The layout and aesthetics of your technical documentation should be attractive, consistent, and functional. To evaluate if your layout and aesthetics enhance the readability and comprehension of your content, use cognitive walkthrough. This includes checking if it uses appropriate colors, fonts, images, and white space; follows a consistent style and theme; and complies with accessibility guidelines and best practices. You should also consider if the layout and aesthetics support the content hierarchy and structure, use contrast, alignment, and balance, use relevant and high-quality visuals, and follow accessibility standards for color, font, and size. To conduct a cognitive walkthrough of your technical documentation presentation, define user personas, scenarios, and tasks. Then walk through each task step by step while asking yourself the questions above. Involve other reviewers to get different perspectives as well. By using cognitive walkthrough, you can improve the usability of your technical documentation presentation to ensure a positive user experience.

4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?