The brilliance of Adobe’s embedded contextual help

Learning to use complex software can be a difficult process. Documentation can be an invaluable aid to users when they’re getting started.

Contextual help (also known as context-sensitive help) can go one step further in helping users get over a steep learning curve, especially for software with lots of functionality. It’s help content presented in the software interface for a seamless learning experience.

Adobe Audition embedded help

Adobe probably knows user onboarding is an issue with their software. That’s why they use a particular type of contextual help called ‘embedded help’ to guide users through the first steps of using Adobe Audition.

Adobe Audition is editing software for audio files. It’s reasonably intimidating to the uninitiated user, but Adobe provides contextual help tooltips, walkthroughs and instructions to guide beginners through the interface.

It appears as soon as you launch the application, and presents a number of options that a user can choose from.

We’ve gone for ‘Getting started with Adobe Audition’. Helpfully, they even tell you why you might be using this software in the first place, to enable maximum creativity.

Then, the tooltips indicate that you need to click a button to edit a new file. Their choice is based on the understanding that this is the most likely action a user will want to perform. 

Contextual help hovers inside the console so the user doesn’t even have to click on a question mark to find out the tooltip. Adobe combines this with more in-depth help documentation walkthroughs that appear within the interface, with visual examples.

The tutorial takes you through how to create an audio file, drawing your attention to what’s important. Even if a user could intuitively guess how to use your software, simply feeling inadequate and overwhelmed can sap their attention span.

It includes animated GIFs to demonstrate how to go back through your history of edits.

The interface even automatically opens one of the drop-down menus to show you all the effects options in their library. This anticipates a likely action that theoretical users will want to explore.

As you go through the contextual tutorials, the concepts that are introduced become increasingly complex. This reflects the user’s learning journey and builds on the knowledge they’ve already accumulated.

If contextual help steps move too far ahead, missing a perceived ‘step’ runs the risk of breaking the concentration of your user.

Defining contextual help

Contextual help is different to conventional documentation because it is broken down into very small topics that are presented in conjunction with that particular step in the software interface.

There are several different types of contextual help:

• Walkthroughs help users learn how to perform certain tasks
• Tooltips explain what particular elements in the interface are for
• Interface instructions

Adobe uses a combination of these to create an embedded learning experience. Learn even more about embedded contextual help.

Benefits of contextual help

It means that users don’t have to find the documentation they need at that particular moment in time. You’re putting it right there in front of them so they don’t have to interrupt their workflow.

External documentation relies on your user being motivated enough to find it, and then switch back to their task in your software to have another go. They also have to remember the steps that they learned and apply them back in a different context. This is very difficult, which only increases with the complexity of the task.

Such a process might be fine for software that a person is contractually obliged to use by their employer. If you’re trying to persuade new users to switch to your software, this approach is less reliable.

Why we need contextual help

Sometimes it’s very difficult to simplify software to the point that the beginner user can easily pick it up. Adobe software is a case in point.

Digital natives may find learning this industry-standard creative software a walk in the park, but for many people the learning curve quickly defeats them.

The best solution to this challenge is to introduce native contextual help to the platform to shorten the learning curve, and hold the user’s hand so they can learn in a comfortable environment.

Many users won’t even think of accessing external user documentation. They may forget that it exists, or lack motivation to switch between platforms.

KnowledgeOwl contextual help

If you are a user of KnowledgeOwl's knowledge base software, you can take advantage of our contextual help widget. It’s great if you want to guide your knowledge base audience towards useful content.

For example, in KnowledgeOwl, we have a help button that you can click on wherever you are.

Depending on what section of the platform you’re in, you’ll see different suggested articles.

If you’re on Knowledge Base > Articles, you will see it suggests articles about creating content (like displaying pdfs).

If you’re on Setting > Styles, it suggests different articles related to theming (such as how to create a favicon).

KnowledgeOwl customers can take full advantage of our help widget to customize their own knowledge bases.

Final remarks

Being able to provide adequate contextual help requires thoroughly knowing your users and the tasks they want to use your software for. It’s therefore a powerful branding tool that communicates your company really cares about its customers.

By implementing contextual help, you’re sending out a clear and strong message about who your intended users are for your software. Instead of creating software that’s accessible to only the most seasoned technical users, you’re opening up your potential customer base and increasing your profits.

Alongside external user documentation, contextual help can be used very effectively to shorten the learning curve for complex software. It means that support can be provided so seamlessly that users may not even realise they are being helped.

You are empowering users to learn by themselves. You’re improving the chances that they will adopt your software and recommend it to others.

KnowledgeOwl offers dedicated knowledge base software to help you write your best support documentation. Take us for a free spin today.

Image credit: The Blue Diamond Gallery