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Fusion 5.9
    Fusion 5.9

    Audience

    This article was written for a Springboard audience. It may not apply to Fusion’s audience.

    We write documentation for customers and personas with a variety of technical knowledge coming in to Springboard. We don’t want to assume too little knowledge when writing documentation and insult the user’s intelligence. On the other hand, we also don’t want to assume too much and overwhelm them.

    Knowledge is cumulative. You may assume the user understands concepts of the previous levels when writing to a specific level.

    These user levels are a guideline. Occasionally it may be necessary to write an article’s introduction to one level before writing the rest of the article to another level.

    Beginner skill level

    These users are the newest Springboard users. They may be visiting Springboard for the first time and are creating their accounts. They may not know how to access Springboard, how to sign in, or how to create users. We need to explain the most basic Springboard concepts to them.

    Other beginner users know what Springboard is and how to access basic items in Springboard. They have likely completed the Getting Started with Springboard articles and have explored the UI. They understand that Springboard’s features are deep and require a lot of configuration but they’re curious and ready to learn.

    For the newest users, we can expect to provide information like:

    • The URL to access Springboard

    • How to sign in to Springboard

    • That you need to sign in to Springboard to perform a task

    Even for new users, we don’t need to describe fields and values not specific to Lucidworks in great detail. Examples include First Name and Last Name.

    Example articles written for new and beginner users:

    Intermediate skill level

    These users are starting to dig deep into Springboard’s features. They understand that Springboard offers a depth of features and are starting to understand them.

    At this point it’s reasonable to assume users know where to look for features. It’s a good idea to remind users of previous assumed knowledge, but you can link back to a relevant article that the users can read to refresh their memory. For example, it’s safe to assume the user understands what data sources are when explaining the web data source, or that they can read the data sources concept article to understand.

    Example articles written for intermediate users:

    Advanced skill level

    These users are ready to integrate Springboard into their existing workflow. They may not know everything about Springboard yet, but they have other technical skills necessary to accomplish their goals.

    Advanced articles feature a lot of assumed prerequisites that are not related to Springboard. As a result, articles for advanced users typically address frontend and backend developers. Example documentation for advanced users includes API guides, specification files, embeds, and the Search Store API client.

    When writing for advanced users, it’s possible the reader knows more than we do about any non-Springboard assumed knowledge. Advanced articles may feature an introduction that explains what the topic is outside of a Springboard context without going into too much detail. For example, an article explaining the robots.txt file may offer a brief explanation of what the file is and how it works. This helps readers determine if they’re reading the right article.

    At this point, we can assume steps such as knowing where to enter a command. We can write instructions such as "In your terminal, enter…​" but we don’t need to tell the user to open a terminal as a separate step.

    If linking to external resources to go into further detail, be mindful of the resources you link to. URLs can change over time, and our external links may lead to a 404 page when these URLs change. A couple of reliable, stable resources include W3Schools and MDN.

    Examples articles written for advanced users: