There’s a joke in education along the lines that students are taught the notes their teachers wrote down at university 20 years earlier…without going through the heads of either. I mention this because there have been a number of technical communicators who have started to question the technical writing best practices that have been taught… Read more »
Category: Technical Communication
Every Sherlock Holmes needs his Watson (or Molly)
Series 3 of Sherlock has just started on BBC One in the UK. As nearly everyone knows, Sherlock Holmes is a genius consulting detective. Yet, as the saying goes, every Sherlock Holmes needs his Watson (or, in the first episode of this series, needs his Molly). Sherlock Holmes is only a part of a pair,… Read more »
The ideal length for instructional screencast videos
Screencast videos have become a popular means for delivering “how-to” information. One of the questions developers must address is, how long should you make your screencasts? At last weeks’s tekom conference, I saw an interesting presentation by Melanie Huxhold and Dr Axel Luther of SAP on how they develop screencasts for SAP’s products (Produkt- und Lernvideos als ideale… Read more »
Changing times in technical communication 3 – The long form Help topic
One of the most recent developments in web page design has been the introduction of “long form” web pages. Will we also see the long form approach used in Help, or perhaps start to influence the way some Help pages are designed?
Changing times in technical communication 2 – Workflow
We’ve been on the road in recent days and weeks, visiting different documentation teams, and we’ve found there are distinct signs of change. In this post, I’ll look at how we’re starting to see the workflow for creating User Assistance beginning to change. We found many documentation teams overstretched and starting to be asked how… Read more »