Monday, March 3, 2003|
Usable Help:
Exploring embedded Help
"If Help is made inseparable from the user experience it might finally stop being mere 'documentation'". 8:40:24 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Gerry McGovern:
Why content management software hasn't worked
"Content management software hasn't worked because it was badly designed and massively over-hyped. Software companies lied about their products, charging criminal prices for crap software. It hasn't worked because organizations didn't understand content. They wanted a quick fix. They issued specifications that bore little relation to what they actually needed." [Via elearningpost] Or maybe it hasn't worked because, like knowledge management, it's an oxymoron. Or perhaps because "content" is such a vague a word that no one knows what managing it would look like. Here's the punchline, though: organizations are able to write and publish effectively "because they have excellent editors and writers, and because they have well-defined, well-policed publishing processes and policies". 8:15:27 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Sunday, March 2, 2003|
I've applied a Creative Commons license to this weblog, including my songs. In short, you're welcome to use my material provided you give me credit, but you need my permission to make money from it. 10:51:47 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003|
E-Learning Post:
Beyond cardsorting: Free-listing methods to explore user categorizations
"Free-listing is a semi-structured method. It can be conducted as part of an interview, or as a written exercise (and can be done online as well). Simply ask the respondent, 'Name all the x's you know.' Give them sufficient time to do so. If they stop after very few items, encourage them by saying, 'Can you think of any more?'" 10:03:23 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Thursday, November 21, 2002
Joel on Software
"... delays accumulate, while advances do not (for example, if you have finished this week's work on Friday morning, chances are you will waste time on Friday afternoon rather than starting the next week's work. But if you don't make it on time, you'll still leave at 5 o'clock on Friday, accumulating a delay"
Not just programming, dear reader, but any task that requires a high degree of detailed, abstract thought. Technical writing and instructional design, for example. 8:39:33 PM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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The Cranky User article led me to the Baen Free Library: "Online piracy - while it is definitely illegal and immoral - is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates." 8:42:04 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Gar's Tips on Suck-Less Writing
"Important note to newbies: Never, EVER find yourself saying the following in email to an editor: 'I know you only asked for [your assigned word count goes here], but here's [your outrageously flabby, up all night buzzing your brains out on caffeine until you've lost all perspective and restraint word count goes here].'"
[Via Boing Boing]
An informative and amusing collection of pointers on the craft of writing. 9:29:53 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Monday, November 4, 2002|
An eBook usability triangle
"Successful onscreen publishing, whether in Help or eBook format, requires attention to appearance, behavior, and identity" 8:33:12 AM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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Monday, October 21, 2002|
The lowest-common denominator problem
"The more people involved with a documentation project, the harder it is to serve the intended audience."
[Usable Help] 10:39:36 PM | permalink | Bare your teeth [] |
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