User Generated Content (UGC), that is user documentation written by users, is growing trend in the world of technical communication. However, although there are enormous benefits from UGC, we’ve found it can lead users to miss professionally written user documentation. The consequence of this can be that users search and navigate down blind allies in a… Read more »
Tag: trends
The Economics of Content Strategy
One of the recurring themes at recent conferences on technical communication has been content strategy. You see speakers commenting that writing skills are valued less, and so Technical Communicators should look to become more strategic and managerial. In this context, content strategy is a focus on improving efficiency and productivity of content creation, management and… Read more »
Affective Assistance – Highlights from TCUK 2010 presentation
This video contains edited highlights from Ellis’ presentation at the TCUK 2010 conference on Affective Assistance, which was called “documentation as an emotional experience for the user”. We’re developing a workshop on Affective Assistance – contact us if you’d like to know more.
Why Nokia’s David Black is probably wrong about the manual-less cellphone
Nokia’s David Black provided an excellent opening keynote presentation at the TCUK 2010 conference, where he described the documentation produced by Nokia and predicted a bleak outlook for all but the most technical of Technical Authors. David’s team works mostly on developing information for developers and partners, rather than end users. He revealed that 50% of… Read more »
Will online video replace the written user guide?
TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of Web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” – a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. He claims What Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication…Information often can be taken in… Read more »