Designer's Gallery > Consumer Software > Seven Steps

Seven Steps is a online help authoring program with a very structured process for writing online help.  The Project Guide (Figure 1) lists all the steps and task for gathering requirements and information to write and compile an online help system for an application. There are seven main steps (listed across the top of the screen) and tasks within each step. The Project Guide also shows information about the roles of the people involved in the help project. Each task shows the roles involved in that task. A user can click on a role name (Author, Developer, Domain expert, Project leader) to highlight  the tasks for the select role. 

The description of each task contains links to MS-Word documents and the various help authoring components of Seven Step.  The MS-Word documents contain forms that can be used to capture information about the project. 

Figure 1

Steven Step uses a very structured approach for organizing and presenting each help topic. Figure 2 shows the authoring window for one of several different types of help topics. Each type of help topic has a particular structure and organization. A Task topic (below) requires the author to describe

1. The preconditions for a task to be preformed, such as an application window being open.

2. The step by step instructions for performing the task or operation

3. The results that occur when the steps are complete 

4. Any notes or additional information about the task. 

Figure 2

You can download an evaluation copy of Seven Steps from the Seven Steps Web site.