Usable Help

By Gordon Meyer | Examining onscreen help and documentation.

Usable Help - Real help in real time

Real help in real timeHelpouts by Google leverages their Hangouts architecture to provide one-on-one real-time tutorials and assistance on a variety …

Kindle Fire

Usable Help - Best-selling sofware manuals

Best-selling sofware manualsTwo of the best selling books in 2014 were software manuals. For a video game. I don't mean that they were the …

Usable Help - Engineering reductionism

Engineering reductionismIt's said that every problem can be reduced to a flowchart. In fact, this is essential for the coming singularity. I always …

Engineering

Usable Help - Death throes of relevancy

Death throes of relevancyThe design exploration (aka masturbation) "Out of the Box" that was done under the aegis of Samsung was supposed to result …

Design

Evernote as a content distribution channel

I’m addicted to Evernote. I use it throughout the day to capture my meeting notes and other thoughts. I was recently joking with a fellow Evernote …

Evernote

"URL" Stands for...? New Pew Report Has Surprising Stats on America's Tech Knowledge. - Recode

Are you all too familiar with the concept of “leaning in,” but unable to pick Sheryl Sandberg out of a crowd? Vaguely aware that “Moore’s law” refers to rapidly-evolving technology, but drawing a blank on who Mr. Moore is or how transistors multiply?You’re in the majority.A new report out today …

Statistics

Usable Help - Standard reference for mobile doc development

Standard reference for mobile doc developmentJoe Welinske's Developing User Assistance for Mobile Apps has been revised and expanded. It was the …

Apps

Usable Help - Simplifying Armageddon

Simplifying ArmageddonMichael Dobbs, writing Nuclear Option for Smithsonian magazine, describes the iconic "Football" valise carried by the President …

U.S. Presidency

Usable Help - So long, Macworld

So long, MacworldAfter 30 years of publication, the venerable Macworld magazine will no longer produce a printed magazine. I'm inclined just to say …

Usable Help - Tiny tutorials

Tiny tutorialsWhile in many ways Vine represents the worst in the erosion of attention spans and polish, it can also be an effective tool for visual …

Erosion

Guess Who Wrote Microsoft's 'Blue Screen of Death'

If you’ve ever used a Windows PC, you have most likely experienced the "Blue Screen of Death," which would show up when a program experienced a fatal error or became unresponsive. In later versions of Windows, you’d see this blue screen any time you pressed “Control-Alt-Delete.”Well, according to a …

Microsoft

Usable Help - Why everything is OK

Why everything is OKAndy Hertzfeld, one of the fathers of Macintosh, writes about how "OK" became the universal "go ahead and do this" interface …

Usable Help - Not our job to make it easy

Not our job to make it easyMark Bernstein, writing Intuitive, argues that professional software doesn't always have to always make things intuitive …

Usable Help - How to make a design problem worse with documentation

How to make a design problem worse with documentationAbout a year ago I wrote about my experience using an Energizer flashlight that would …

Design

Usable Help - Managing prose as if it were code

Managing prose as if it were codeFrank Miller, writing Is Managing Content the Same as Managing Code? for CIDM, offers several important points on …

Frank Miller

Usable Help - Tech writing with heart

Tech writing with heartJames Somers, writing You’re Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary, observes that somewhere along the line our dictionaries were …

Technical writing

Usable Help - Walkthroughs are cruft to be scraped away

Walkthroughs are cruft to be scraped awaySarah Perez, writing Rethinking the Mobile App “Walkthrough” for TechCrunch wonders if introductory UI …

Usable Help - A thousand words in a jiffy

A thousand words in a jiffyDavid Smith, author of the RSS tool Feed Wrangler, writes about his methods and workflow for creating animated GIF files …

Usable Help - Generate good faked data

Generate good faked dataHere is yet another method to create faux information for use in screenshots and examples. Faker is a Python-based program …

Usable Help - Title goes here

Usable Help - An impressive online tutorial

An impressive online tutorialThe Portland-based software company Panic Inc has posted an amazing web-based tutorial for its Diet Coda web development …

How-To's

Bryan Wood on Twitter

A woman attempting to take a picture at a hockey game in Sochi today. This may be one of my favorite pics ever.pic.twitter.com/x2X20ebCdq

👎👎 silly @MarketplaceAPM http://t.co/KIN68VoevK

Using copyright to keep repair manuals secret undermines circular economy

When I was young, I remember running around my grandfather's workshop – benches strewn with wood shavings, drawers overflowing with tools, shelves lined with dog-eared repair manuals.Perhaps it was characteristic of a generation touched by the Great Depression, but in my grandfather's era, repair …