On an API documentation course we ran for a client yesterday, we showed a number of developer documentation websites, including ones from Amazon, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft. One common theme the delegates noticed was these sites contained a in-page table of contents, or a set of related links, on the right hand set of the screen. You will… Read more »
Cherryleaf Blog
Documentation as an API – the docsbot
In a recent presentation, Twilio’s Jarod Reyes and Andrew Baker mentioned their plans to make Twilio’s developer documentation available as an API. They plan to start with an API for code samples, stored in a github repository. Making documentation available as an API means means users can create or remix their own versions of the documentation. For example, they could… Read more »
Customer Journey Mapping and technical communication
A technical communicator’s lot is usually to create content for helping users, and, if they are lucky, do some user testing of it in order to make future improvements. It is not that common for them to be able to look at the bigger picture and think about how the user gets to that information… Read more »
Research into how API documentation fails
There isn’t a great deal of research into API documentation, and the factors that make API content good or bad. Here’s some of the papers we’ve found so far: How API documentation fails. Research by Uddin and Robillard, McGill University, 2015. Creating and Evolving Developer Documentation: Understanding the Decisions of Open Source Contributors, Dagenais and Robillard, 2010…. Read more »
Thyssenkrupp to make HoloLens goggles available to field-service staff
Thyssenkrupp is making Microsoft’s HoloLens goggles available to field-service staff, to assist them in diagnosing and repairing elevators. “HoloLens with Skype capabilities enables over 24,000 thyssenkrupp technicians to receive remote assistance by subject matter experts who can provide visual and audible advice using HoloLens’s mixed reality capabilities. These remote subject matter experts can see what… Read more »