The User Manual for the on-line version of the Pralana Retirement Calculator (coming soon) is (1) being integrated with the tool and (2) being organized into sections on how to accomplish a particular thing using the tool rather than a page-by-page description. We're considering the addition of a companion document containing use cases to replace or supplement examples within the manual. With that as an introduction, I'd like to use this Forum to solicit your thoughts on how to make the Pralana user manuals better. We'll give all of your suggestions due consideration going forward. Thanks!!
Stuart
It sounds like you are already on the right track with your organization plan and I'm excited to see the new product. Here are my thoughts:
Clear instructions using the format "If you want to do this...", "Do this...", "You can verify the change by looking here..." and "Be aware that this change may also impact these other things..."
Same for tooltips. "Increasing/decreasing this value has this effect... As seen in your plan here..." etc.
Ted
I'd like to see something that provides ways to double check one's settings. There are a lot of inputs that change things dramatically over time. I think it would be nice to have a variety of global level defaults scenarios.
Agree, as a new user default settings would be great as a reset.
It would be great to have a (or even a few) "playground" plans that were fully configured where you could switch over to and make changes in order to see how they play out. Maybe a "simple, medium and complex" plan or "starting out, middle age, retired". Then have a reset option for each button to clear all changes and take everything back to the defaults. This would also give you an exact plan to refer to in the manual and the ability to give examples of values users could change in the test plans along with the results they would see without having to be concerned about the user not getting the expected result for some other reason when changing the value in their own plan.
The simple, medium, complex scenarios could even be progressively unlocked as users worked through them to avoid initially being overwhelmed or confused.
