I decided to try out London’s Barclays Cycle Hire, known colloqually as “Boris bikes”, yesterday. There are 6,000 bicycles distributed across central London that you can hire on an ad-hoc basis. While the scheme is a great concept, for the casual user it lacks something – information on using the bikes! Where user information is… Read more »
Cherryleaf Blog
Documenting an Olympics
The London 2012 Olympic Games are less than a year away, and we recently came across some information about the IT systems that will be supporting the games. According to Computer Weekly, “Planning and implementing IT in any major project is challenging to say the least. Problems and delays can cost millions of pounds. The… Read more »
New review of Trends in Technical Communication – Rethinking Help
David Kowalsky has reviewed “Trends in Technical Communication – Rethinking Help” in the latest STC Puget Sound Chapter’s newsletter. Trends in TC ’s good introduction explains this eBook is a collection of articles and selected excerpts on recent trends in software technical documentation “to help those involved in developing software User Assistance, in all its forms, determine a… Read more »
Is most beginner technical writing training out of touch with the real world?
In developing our new Technical author basic/induction training course modules, one thing that struck us was it is easy to talk about a technical writing process that is often not followed in reality. For example, most books on technical writing describe how the writing project begins with a planning stage, an activity where the project is… Read more »
Cherryleaf Technical Author survey 2011 – in words
Last month, we conducted an online survey that 226 Technical Authors completed. We also conducted some in depth interviews with UK Documentation Managers to get a better insight into the responses. Below is some feedback we received. Why user guides are not published on Web sites The main reasons we heard why user documentation was… Read more »