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The page for "help" within the site is designed well. The site totals about 40 questions, which has been reduced down from 86. My objective is to simplify the user experience for viewing/navigating the help questions/topics. I was wondering if there is a general rule of thumb of how many questions should be displayed at once.

This site will also be dealing with screen-readers.

I was thinking of 4 topics with 10 questions within each, but even 10 questions seem a bit much to see at once for a help section.

What should be the number of topics/questions visible in a help page?

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    The goal of any help page should be zero questions. ;) That said, logical grouping under a set of headers would definitely be a good start.
    – DA01
    Sep 28, 2012 at 2:53
  • Like your thinking ;). I understand that logical grouping would be the ideal way of sorting, but do you propose that eventually seeing sets of 10 questions might be a little overwhelming for a user?
    – Kyle Mirro
    Sep 28, 2012 at 3:34
  • Well, that goes back to point #1...the fewer questions the better, but if the questions HAVE to be there, then I'd rather have them in one spot, regardless of how many groups. But it all depends on context, of course.
    – DA01
    Sep 28, 2012 at 4:57

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All the topics should be visible and explicit. Any question the user is likely to have should be answered. If its 4 questions, its 4 questions, if its 86 questions, so be it. If its 8600 questions, its 8600 questions. Whatever is needed, you shouldn't be limiting access to useful information in the name of digestibility.

If you already know what needs to be expressed. the challenge is organizing and structuring access to that content, not contemplating how much of it to show.

So first, you have some attractive methods:

  • Search
  • Categories
  • Tags

Second, is deciding how you are going to be revealing content that does not fit on the screen. To which you have options:

  • Scrolling
  • Collapsable sections
  • Tabs
  • Sticky in page navigation
  • Carrousel

The goal is to think about your content; and how best to provide easy access to information. Then structure the user's interactions, to reflect the nature and structure of the information itself.

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