Sarah Maddox (Technical Writer, Atlassian) is another champion of engaging readers through technical documentation. Here is a video of her presentation to the Atlassian User Group Wiesbaden. It’s called “Engaging your readers in the documentation. How and why social media?” See also Reduce Support calls by engaging readers with user documentation
Tag: trends
When Mercedes made emotional owner’s handbooks
In this week’s Autocar magazine, Chris Goodwin bemoans the fact that Daimler AG has taken the romance out of its owner’s handbooks. He refers to the handbooks for Mercedes cars built in the 1980s, and how they congratulated the owner on their wise decision to purchase an expensive, high quality car:
Searching for key words and phrases in training videos – Adventures in media synchronization
One of the limitations of video-based information has been the difficulties for users in finding a particular piece of information in a video. Usually, they have to watch the whole video, or “peck and hunt” to get to the moment containing the information they were searching for. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, HTML5, an… Read more »
Embedding live data into training videos – Adventures in media synchronization
One of the topics Ellis covered in his presentation at Technical Communication UK 12 conference was how media synchronization is likely to affect online training, online Help and other forms of user assistance. HTML5, an emerging Web standard, will enable Technical Authors and courseware developers to synchronize different media, such as live data and video recordings. To illustrate… Read more »
How the new Kindles might affect the role of the Technical Author
Here are some initial thoughts on how the new Kindles from Amazon might affect the role of the Technical Author. Yet more diversity in reading platforms Technical Authors know this already – their content needs to work on lots of platforms and across different mediums. It’s more evidence that the layout must not be baked… Read more »