Here is a nice use of flash cards as a way of providing user documentation. In this case, it’s the legal rights of New York tenants:
Designer and artist Candy Change collaborated with non-profit group “Tenants & Neighbors” to develop and produce a boxed set of 30 flash cards on tenants’ rights. The flash cards translate New York’s official Tenants’ Rights Guide into an accessible format that covers everything from security deposits and sub-letting to privacy and eviction.
Traditionally, these type of documents have looked great but taken a lot of time and effort to produce. However, with more and more technical documentation content stored as re-usable chunks of information in XML-based Content Management Systems, it’s a lot easier to do . You simply re-publish your content, a topic on each page, as playing card size pages and send that off to your printer.
Very smart.
We use something similar here in China to teach business people common Chinese phrases. The flash cards are also portable and can be downloaded to their iphones/ophones.
Ivan
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by ellispratt: Blog: Documentation as flash cards http://is.gd/53eKY…
Excellent …! A worthwhile solution to step away from content heavy user guides which I truly believe most users discard before even opening a page (except for your systems and engineering type people of course).
Great to know I’m not alone out there in trying to move user documentation from “door stops” to “practical and accessible information”.
Think the down-loadable version onto iPhones is brilliant. An excellent way of distributing info.
Nice idea!
Once I saw something similar in a bookstore: small recipe cards inside a small cute box, and thought it was a good format. The same in these.