Help and Documentation
Make help easy to find, focused on the task, and available when people need it.
Good help answers the question without pulling people away from the task.
Even a clear product will have moments that need explanation. The mistake is making people leave their task, search a large help center, and translate a generic article into an answer. Good help meets the question where it appears.
Origin
Jakob Nielsen included Help and Documentation in his 1994 heuristics. Alita Kendrick's 2020 explanation separates proactive help, offered before a problem, from reactive help used for troubleshooting and deeper learning.
Use proactive help when it matches the person's current task. Keep tips brief, useful, and easy to dismiss so they support the work instead of blocking it.
Make reactive help searchable and organize it around tasks. Use titles such as How to export a file instead of naming an internal feature or screen.
Make instructions easy to scan. Use clear headings, short sections, highlighted keywords, and numbered steps for work that must happen in order.
Use graphics or video when they make a complex action easier to follow, but keep a text version available for people who cannot or do not want to watch.
Digital systems
Figma Support Pages
Figma's help pages break each task into clear headings and numbered steps. Someone can scan to the step they need, follow it, and return to the product without reading a long article.
Physical signals
Airport Information Kiosk
An airport information kiosk puts help where travelers need it. Someone can look up a gate or service while standing in the terminal, then continue their journey.
When guidance is generic, hard to search, or detached from the task, people must stop what they are doing and translate documentation into their own situation.
Use short contextual guidance for immediate questions, and keep deeper documentation searchable, scannable, and organized around real tasks.