Microsoft is working to provide developers the next experience with local documentation. Last December, the Library team released the SP1 beta version of its Microsoft Help Viewer for Visual Studio. Additionally, there are a number of changes and improvement being made on the local Help Viewer, as well as MSDN and other documentation-related assets at Microsoft. As part of ensuring that our efforts align with and respond to the needs and desires of our customer, the Microsoft Developer Division is increasing the user research conducted on its assets.

For us to better understand your needs and desires, we need you to get involved and participate in user studies conducted in our division. Many studies happen here, on the Microsoft Redmond Campus, but there are a number of research efforts conducted remotely, including remote usability studies and interviews. Participating is your chance to impact the tools you may use tomorrow. Each participant is compensated for his time with a gratuity that may vary depending on the study.

To register to participate in our studies, please fill in the following survey on our DatStat server:

https://illumeweb.smdisp.net/collector/Survey.ashx?Name=FY2011

Recruiting today for the local help viewing experience

Today, we are specifically looking for participants in a study concerning the use of locally installed documentation for development. If you are a regular user of the offline viewer, we would like to interview for iterations on the Microsoft Help Viewer. The interviews would be done over the phone, remote desktop applications, or in person, and last between 45 and 90 minutes. We require that participants live in North America due to logistic restrictions. Participants will be compensated for their time with a Microsoft technical gratuity which includes both consumer and developer software as well as some hardware.

For participating in this study, you can contact the user researcher directly: Yann Riche (yannr@microsoft.com)