Journeys 7/9 - Refer to Other Sources of information

Written by Andrea Folino

Newired Journeys in a Nutshell

Newired Journeys is one of the products offered by Newired to help end users of software and applications better use and understand these digital resources. Journeys are, in a few words, guidelines which appear to end users in a sequence, normally consisting of several steps, which typically lead them to complete a task.

In this article, the seventh one in our series of articles for Journeys, we will explain how to add external resources to our Journeys. Now that we know what Journeys are and which process we should bear in mind while creating them, let’s make them more interactive!

Why add external resources to our Journeys?

While creating a Journey or a Tip, you might need to explain a specific or complex concept to the end users in more depth. In a situation like this, using links to external sources could be the best choice. Also, adding videos and images can make our Journey much more interactive.

Why use a link?

Let’s do this in an orderly fashion:

Briefly describing complex concepts in a few lines of a Journey can be very demanding for the author and can result in something too superficial and hard to understand;
On the other hand, writing difficult concepts can result in an unreadable, huge amount of text. And let’s face it, everyone hates them…
Keeping up-to-date with every new explanation that is external to our duties when creating Journeys is a hard task that can be optimized
An internet page that focuses on and develops a topic is surely better than our text written in a hurry. Also, there is a chance that it is often more up-to-date than what we write (addressing point 3).

Skimming

Links are fast to recognize, brief and full of information. But filling your Journeys with them would probably make a big mess and confuse users as to which information to focus on, the very important ones.

Just like everything, you need to find a balance and look for the most relevant links, so that users will surely click on them and enhance their knowledge without getting bored or confused by all those underlined blue writings.

Different kinds of sources

Don’t forget that external resources don’t just refer to articles or news, but also to videos and photos/images.

Apart from textual information, external sources can make use of images and sounds to transmit a piece of information. It’s up to you to choose the most suitable method to spread your message.