What Can You Cut?

This series explores the six decisions to make when planning software training from the August 2016 article in TD magazine, “All Systems Go”.
 
The second decision is “What can you cut?”
 
The authors ask three questions when planning what you don’t need to include in your online software training:

1. “Are your users computer-savvy enough that you can skip or lightly cover basic tasks?”
2. “Do you need to cover every way to do something?”
3. “Can you take inspiration from cooking shows?”

 
For the first item, I often see customer-focused online training get bogged down by everything you can accomplish on one screen or other extraneous information outside the focus of accomplishing a specific task. I’m a big believer in micro-learning, so if you think your customers need the basic information, make it a separate lesson from the task, and users who need that information can take advantage of it separately.
 
Customer-focused training may not show every way to do a task. You can, however, provide extra details like keyboard shortcuts without narrating every possibility.
 
If you want to take inspiration from cooking shows, skip the details if they aren’t pertinent to the task being taught. The example in the article is, “unless the episode is about chopping onions, the chef has them already chopped.” In other words, don’t waste learning time on something the customers already know how to do.
 
Next time, we’ll discuss the third decision from the article-“ are you targeting new or existing users?”