In-App Tutorials Redo Feedback

[Gabriela.AD]

Currently RemNote’s documentation is a bit complicated to navigate. Let’s see how we can streamline it.

Here are some rough drafts updated to reflect the current considerations (not proof-read):
Sidebar Draft
Tutorial Outline Draft
Style Guide Draft
About Page Draft

RemNote’s tone seems to be geared towards younger people and the tone used is a friendly one, so I suppose we could go with that, while being mindful to not alienate an older demographic.

Some feedback on what would be more useful for you would really help, especially when it comes to how the Tutorials are outlined and how much flavour text is inserted. I’m a bit stumped on that one ATM.

Once the structure is settled, we’ll deal with the written articles, media and examples (will be easier to understand than the current ones) that would go in. Some things would also need to be looked up in the forums, update notes & Discord. ATM I’m collecting what needs to be mentioned in each page.

Poll: How do you prefer Tutorials to be written when you are looking up a feature? Example Snippets are in the Tutorial Outline Draft.

• Lots of flavour, chatter & personality injected between the tutorial itself
• Mostly straight to the point with minimal bla bla
• More of a structured format
• A combination of styles (Give some suggestions please)

[hannesfrank]

Copy of my Discord reply about the writing style:

I’m voting for a combo, but it’s really hard to describe this objectively. Here are some random thoughts:

I like it if the writing style is not too serious and formal. Think Discord update logs, but not that extreme. I think this also fits the majority of RemNotes user base (young people, students). I think crafting this is really hard while maintaining a high quality standard and not sounding silly so IDK.

I like precise and compact wording. This does not necessarily contradict informal writing: You can be tounge in cheek without too much redundancy/chatter and being too verbose. Again: I would find this difficult.

Structure to help you find what you are looking for is very important. It is also the main selling point of an outline editor, so we should get that especially right - more than specific writing style IMO. I would not use the CD framework for this though since this is what new users don’t know yet and it takes a while to absorb the concept (no pun intended) and get used to it. Headings and a consistent set of full rem highlights and maybe some Emojis would already go a long way. E.g. orange is a warning for a common mistake, green is the key message/main takeaway, blue is an additional tip. I found the emoji usage here pretty cool: Epic React:

• Kody the Koala will tell you when there’s something specific you should do
• Matthew the Muscle will indicate that you’re working with an exercise
• Chuck the Checkered Flag will indicate that you’re working with a final version
• Marty the Money Bag will give you specific tips (and sometimes code) along the way
• Hannah the Hundred will give you extra challenges you can do if you finish the exercises early.
• Olivia the Owl will give you useful tidbits/best practice notes and a link for elaboration and feedback.
• Dominic the Document will give you links to useful documentation
• Berry the Bomb will be hanging around anywhere you need to blow stuff up (delete code)
• Peter the Product Manager helps us know what our users want
• Alfred the Alert will occasionally show up in the test failures with potential explanations for why the tests are failing.

Maybe we can get folding in exported articles/tutorials as well? This would make navigation through the tutorials much easier. We could even have all tutorials in one hierarchy?

[hannesfrank]

At some point I’d also like to see individualized onbordings for people coming from Anki/Obsidian/Roam and based on their preferred usage of RemNote.

There should be different onboardings for people more focused on note-taking which basically explain how to use RemNote similar to Roam.
And a more spaced repetition focused tour which starts with flashcard creation and goes lighter on portals and stuff.

Preferrably an interactive tutorial system should ask a few questions and then generate an individual guide for that person.
But there could also just be specific Quickstart tutorial pages explaining the differences between RemNote and Roam/Obsidian/…

These specialized hands-on guided tutorials can complement a reference section which describes one feature in isolation.

[UMNiK]

Surely this could be accommodated to different extents by the various media the tutorials are presented in?

• The current text documentation is bone dry except for a few examples, which is at it should be - people need to know the specific names of specific functions and the related shortcuts/whatever additional info at a glance. Ideally it will also natively include all the under-the-hood stuff unearthed by the CSS people (so the lists of all the selectors and so on are always up to date rather than spread across the forum and discord).
• The “native” video tutorials are a bit structurally loose, but they too keep to a formal style - this is about to be expanded by engaging other content creators to create tutorials in whatever style they choose, and hopefully a few of them will choose to be a bit lighter rather than ploughing verbatim through concept-descriptor (if engaging with the SRS at all).
• The interactive tutorials are probably the most frivolous at the moment, and could and should be expanded on and split into both levels and categories. As suggested by Hannes, app-to-app migration ones should be quick above all, while student-focused (SRS) can afford a bit of levity. The more broad outliner/tag/reference stuff could be either completely separate, in which case it must be neutral, or copied across all sections with added specific flavours (perhaps students could be taught the outliner with docs and folders per class and lecture first, while people migrating from other networked notebooks see the references and aliases front and center).