Barker chapter 14: Designing Indexes
With in this chapter Barker explain the importance of the index and the reason for indexing.
The importance of the index lies with in whom the potential users of the index maybe. Figuring out what the user of the material in which the index is for is how the index will mainly be designed.
Barker has five guidelines for designing an index
Plan your indexing strategy
Decide what to index
Identify the level of detail
Decide on phrasing and formatting
Edit and proofread
Planning your index strategy involves which method of indexing you will be doing, either manual or electronic. The first step in designing and building an index which Barker mentions is to review the user analysis by refreshing your memory about what the user’s main activities and actions are with the software or manual. The next steps are different depending whether you are designing an electronic index or manual one. With indexing a manual you need to read or scan for terms or phrases of importance, record the locations of the terms or phrases, and alphabetize and edit the index. For electronic indexes the second step is to mark the index entries, building the index and editing the index. As you maybe able to tell indexing electronically is much fast. You can use electronic marking software to help in marking and building the index. The second step in designing is deciding what to index. Some of the elements Barker mentions for indexing are commands and functions, concepts, user terms and questions, glossary terms, proper names of products and companies, and tasks and procedures. The third guideline is identifying the level of detail. The levels of detail can be determined by the number of levels in the index or by the number of items that you index. The forth guideline is deciding on phrasing and formatting. Barker reminds us that deciding on phrasing and formatting does take some time so be prepared. Phrasing and formatting focuses on cuing of primary locator numbers, capitalizing terms consistently, making the entries sound like sentences, which will help in being more detailed of what the user maybe looking to do, and cuing special terms. The fifth guideline, editing and proofreading Barker again reminds us that this step will take up about 1/3 of the indexing project. Index editing includes checking the page references, and inconsistencies of referenced items.
The importance of the index lies with in whom the potential users of the index maybe. Figuring out what the user of the material in which the index is for is how the index will mainly be designed.
Barker has five guidelines for designing an index
Plan your indexing strategy
Decide what to index
Identify the level of detail
Decide on phrasing and formatting
Edit and proofread
Planning your index strategy involves which method of indexing you will be doing, either manual or electronic. The first step in designing and building an index which Barker mentions is to review the user analysis by refreshing your memory about what the user’s main activities and actions are with the software or manual. The next steps are different depending whether you are designing an electronic index or manual one. With indexing a manual you need to read or scan for terms or phrases of importance, record the locations of the terms or phrases, and alphabetize and edit the index. For electronic indexes the second step is to mark the index entries, building the index and editing the index. As you maybe able to tell indexing electronically is much fast. You can use electronic marking software to help in marking and building the index. The second step in designing is deciding what to index. Some of the elements Barker mentions for indexing are commands and functions, concepts, user terms and questions, glossary terms, proper names of products and companies, and tasks and procedures. The third guideline is identifying the level of detail. The levels of detail can be determined by the number of levels in the index or by the number of items that you index. The forth guideline is deciding on phrasing and formatting. Barker reminds us that deciding on phrasing and formatting does take some time so be prepared. Phrasing and formatting focuses on cuing of primary locator numbers, capitalizing terms consistently, making the entries sound like sentences, which will help in being more detailed of what the user maybe looking to do, and cuing special terms. The fifth guideline, editing and proofreading Barker again reminds us that this step will take up about 1/3 of the indexing project. Index editing includes checking the page references, and inconsistencies of referenced items.
posted by Michael Nelson | 10:49 PM
10 Comments:
I have to admit that I’m not very familiar with making indexes. In fact, I think this class was the first time I have ever made an index for a document. I think it was a good experience for me because it gave me actual experience, and that is always a good thing. For the RoboHELP project, the process was probably much quicker than what it would have been if I did it manually. I just looked for the keywords and actions and used those as the basis for the index. In the end, I think it looked pretty good and I was happy to finally cut my teeth a bit.
Indexing is directly linked to usability. If the user can't find the information they're looking for, then how is the document going to be useful? So, I definitely agree that what is indexed should be directed by the user's needs. I can appretiate a program's automatic indexing function as a good starting tool, but I don't believe in the real world that an automatic index would be sufficient for any substantial document. I just don't think a computer is capable of distinguishing which topics are going to be important to the user and which ones will mislead them (even if the computer was from www.autonomy.com).
I think most style guides have specs for writing indexes. I know the Chicago Manual of Style dedicates a chapter to indexing properly, although the people behind CMS strongly recommend leaving indexing up to professional indexers.
Before we upgraded from an AltaVista search engine to Google at work, users were not able to perform searches on content stored in intranet secured areas. (Another story.) To get around that, we created indexes to help users find what they were looking for in secured documentation. Indexes can be made much more specific than trying determine by chapter title if what you're looking for is included.
FrameMaker makes indexing fairly simple. Once the index marker tags are created, the software does all the work of alphabetizing and levels.
I really liked Will's comment that usability and indexing are related. I often find myself using indexes, especially in course textbooks. Indexes are really helpful for users. And I agree that even though computer-generated indexes are nice and efficient (like in RoboHELP), it is much more accurate to manually decide which topics are important and should be included in the index.
I haven’t spent much time on indexing. What little I have done has been automated through Microsoft Word. I think my lack of indexing experience is due to the type of documentation I produce.
In one of the other classes I took for this degree, one of our assignments was to produce an index. I thought it was quite interesting, but I don't think I would want to do it all day, every day.
I agree that the content of the index is very important because the index is where users find the information they need. The indexing tools I have used have made the job easy, buI also agree that figuring out what to put in to the index is the difficult part of the job.
I am with Wes on this one. I have never made an index for a document. The experience with RoboHelp and AuthorIT was a good experience for even just creating an online document. Much of this class was new to me and this chapter was no different.
I think certain things, like indexes, need to be made manually because a user may connect two things that a computer wouldn't. While computer generated things do streamline and fast-track document creation and distribution certain aspects should be done by humans.
Of course indexes are important, and the larger the doc the more useful they are. The only real indexing I have done was with robohelp and that didn't give me much experience. I think doing so manually would be a huge pain. Although you have a lot more control over the indexing, human error would play a huge role. Not all electronic indexing has to necessarily be done with a specific indexing program. There are lots of features on software programs that can just make generating it a lot quicker and eliminate missed entries etc. The producer still has plenty of control over the index and if nothing else it can be used as a starting point.
Indexes can be very useful for searching through a document, however when I'm going through a help file I usually just go directly to searching capability. Looking at this though I can see some of the advantages of a carefully indexed system, especially when paired with searching capabilities. Human indexing might work alright if you indexed as you went along rather than with software, but that would drag the writing process down significantly.
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