Mobile application development is really forcing technical communicators to think outside the box when it comes to user assistance. Relying on on-line help or linking to PDF documents isn't really the best choice in the limited screen real estate paradigm of mobile applications. So what do you do when you don't have the space to be verbose? You get efficient with your words and find other ways to provide information.
When coming up with alternatives, you have to think about the maintenance of the content and where users will be when they need it. Will they need headphones? Will they be in the car at a customer site? Can/Should they be looking at the screen?
Creating a 5 minute video might sound like a great way to explain it all, but if anything changes in the application, that 5 minute video has to be edited or worse, re-recorded. So, what about short 30 second bursts of information?
If users travel to customer sites, will they be driving? Would an audio explanation be the best way to give them the information they need at that moment?
Coming up with new ways to provide users with content they will use is both exciting and challenging.
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