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“I never really understood that feature, so I left it alone…”
Friday, February 12th, 2010 Posted in Technical Writing | 4 Comments »
The other day I rose early to conduct some user acceptance testing with a new version of our software. As I was going through the new version of the application ... Read more..If No One Reads the Manual, That’s Okay
Sunday, December 27th, 2009 Posted in Technical Writing | 61 Comments »
Most people take time off during the holidays, so if you don't, you end up mostly sitting alone at work, wondering why you're not taking time off too. I wanted ... Read more..The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging: Sin #4, Being Unreadable
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 Posted in Web Design | 2 Comments »
The fourth sin in my ongoing Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging series (being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive) is being unreadable. Readability is probably the easiest sin to correct, especially ... Read more..Discovering Relationship Tables
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 Posted in Technical Writing | 10 Comments »
Lately I've been creating context-sensitive help for an online application. As part of my strategy, I've been trying to follow Theresa Putkey's advice in "Usability in Context-Sensitive Help." In her ... Read more..What Users Don’t Care About
Saturday, July 11th, 2009 Posted in Technical Writing | 24 Comments »
It seems most of the conversations in our industry today revolve around value. If you go to stc.org, the large graphic at the center of the site says "The Value ... Read more..Content Theory: Sheep and Chaos — MK Anderson
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Content Theory: Sheep and Chaos — MK Anderson. Keith Anderson writes about the need for technical communicators to focus on user needs and the user experience as their starting point. ... Read more..Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Sunday, June 28th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). I saw this link from Ivan Walsh. Jakob Nielsen argues that you should write long, in-depth articles on your blog rather than ... Read more..How Google Does Help
Saturday, June 27th, 2009 Posted in Screencasting, Technical Writing, Web 2.0 | 7 Comments »
With all the talk about latest trends and avoiding extinction as communicators, and integrating web 2.0 and wikis, blogs, podcasts, and other interactive social media into help, it's a good ... Read more..Forms that Work – Interview with Caroline Jarrett (podcast)
Saturday, June 20th, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | 3 Comments »
[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://idratherbewriting.com/podcasts/formsthatwork.mp3] Download MP3 Length: 11 min. [caption id="attachment_3841" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Forms that Work"][/caption] In this podcast, Caroline Jarret talks about her new book, Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability, which she co-authored ... Read more..Having Fun with Snagit
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 Posted in Technical Writing | 16 Comments »
This week I needed to create some visuals for a PowerPoint to illustrate concepts related to blogging. Since I have limited artistic ability (perhaps even negative artistic ability), I resorted ... Read more..