Usable Help
By Gordon Meyer | Examining onscreen help and documentation.
Usable Help - Real help in real time
Real help in real time<p>Helpouts by Google leverages their Hangouts architecture to provide one-on-one real-time tutorials and assistance on a variety …
Usable Help - Best-selling sofware manuals
Best-selling sofware manuals<p>Two 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 reductionism<p>It's said that every problem can be reduced to a flowchart. In fact, this is essential for the coming singularity. I always …
Usable Help - Death throes of relevancy
Death throes of relevancy<p>The design exploration (aka masturbation) "Out of the Box" that was done under the aegis of Samsung was supposed to result …
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 …
"URL" Stands for...? New Pew Report Has Surprising Stats on America's Tech Knowledge.
Bill Gates is well-known, but only 21 percent of American tech consumers recognize Sheryl Sandberg: The surprising results of Pew's survey on Americans' knowledge of technology.<p>Are you all too familiar with the concept of “leaning in,” but unable to pick Sheryl Sandberg out of a crowd? Vaguely …
Usable Help - Standard reference for mobile doc development
Standard reference for mobile doc development<p>Joe Welinske's Developing User Assistance for Mobile Apps has been revised and expanded. It was the …
Usable Help - Simplifying Armageddon
Simplifying Armageddon<p>Michael Dobbs, writing Nuclear Option for Smithsonian magazine, describes the iconic "Football" valise carried by the President …
Usable Help - So long, Macworld
So long, Macworld<p>After 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 tutorials<p>While in many ways Vine represents the worst in the erosion of attention spans and polish, it can also be an effective tool for visual …
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.”<p>Well, according to a …
MicrosoftUsable Help - Why everything is OK
Why everything is OK<p>Andy 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 easy<p>Mark 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 documentation<p>About a year ago I wrote about my experience using an Energizer flashlight that would …
Usable Help - Managing prose as if it were code
Managing prose as if it were code<p>Frank Miller, writing Is Managing Content the Same as Managing Code? for CIDM, offers several important points on …
Usable Help - Tech writing with heart
Tech writing with heart<p>James Somers, writing You’re Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary, observes that somewhere along the line our dictionaries were …
Usable Help - Walkthroughs are cruft to be scraped away
Walkthroughs are cruft to be scraped away<p>Sarah 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 jiffy<p>David 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 data<p>Here 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
Examining documentation and help systems since 2002<p>Contents<p>Special Reports<p>Reading Usable Help<p>Gordon R. Meyer<p>Copyright 2002-2015<p>Favorite Sites<p>Title …
Usable Help - An impressive online tutorial
An impressive online tutorial<p>The Portland-based software company Panic Inc has posted an amazing web-based tutorial for its Diet Coda web development …
Using copyright to keep repair manuals secret undermines circular economy
Electronics manufacturers are denying consumers access to repair manuals, and it's working against the environment<p>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 …
RecyclingUsable Help - Don't tell me you love me
Don't tell me you love me<p>The iOS app Ember is called out for its unique approach to gathering user feedback. An in-app survey asks for the user's …
Usable Help - Are we not men?
Are we not men?<p>Bryan Cantrill, CEO of Joyent, writes about how using gender-specific pronouns in code comments is a firing offense. Is your …
Usable Help - Books aren't dead yet
Books aren't dead yet<p>A recent survey by Voxburner found that 62% of people between 16 and 24 years of age prefer printed books over ebooks. …
Usable Help - Simplified iOS 7 screen shots
Simplified iOS 7 screen shots<p>The OS X utility Status Magic allows you to easily customize the status bar shown in iOS screen shots. This can be very …
Usable Help - A stick figure explains cryptography
A stick figure explains cryptography<p>Jeff Moser, an Indiana-based software engineer, has created A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption …