Usable Help

By Gordon Meyer

Examining onscreen help and documentation.

Usable Help - Real help in real time
g2meyer.com
Real help in real time 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
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Best-selling sofware manuals 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
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Engineering reductionism 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
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Death throes of relevancy The design exploration (aka masturbation) "Out of the Box" that was done under the aegis of Samsung was supposed to result …
Joe Wikert's DisruptorFest
typepad.com
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.
Recode - LaurenGoode
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. Are you all too familiar
Usable Help - Standard reference for mobile doc development
g2meyer.com
Standard reference for mobile doc development Joe Welinske's Developing User Assistance for Mobile Apps has been revised and expanded. It was the …
Usable Help - Simplifying Armageddon
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Simplifying Armageddon Michael Dobbs, writing Nuclear Option for Smithsonian magazine, describes the iconic "Football" valise carried by the President …
Usable Help - So long, Macworld
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So long, Macworld 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
g2meyer.com
Tiny tutorials 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'
Entrepreneur - Dave Smith
This story originally appeared on Business Insider 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
Usable Help - Why everything is OK
g2meyer.com
Why everything is OK 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
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Not our job to make it easy 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
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How to make a design problem worse with documentation About a year ago I wrote about my experience using an Energizer flashlight that would …
Usable Help - Managing prose as if it were code
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Managing prose as if it were code Frank Miller, writing Is Managing Content the Same as Managing Code? for CIDM, offers several important points on …
Usable Help - Tech writing with heart
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Tech writing with heart 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
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Walkthroughs are cruft to be scraped away Sarah Perez, writing Rethinking the Mobile App “Walkthrough” for TechCrunch wonders if introductory UI …
Usable Help - A thousand words in a jiffy
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A thousand words in a jiffy 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
g2meyer.com
Generate good faked data 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
g2meyer.com
Examining documentation and help systems since 2002 Contents Special Reports Reading Usable Help Gordon R. Meyer Copyright 2002-2015 Favorite Sites Title …
Usable Help - An impressive online tutorial
g2meyer.com
An impressive online tutorial The Portland-based software company Panic Inc has posted an amazing web-based tutorial for its Diet Coda web development …
Bryan Wood on Twitter
twitter.com - @bryanwx
A woman attempting to take a picture at a hockey game in Sochi today. This may be one of my favorite pics ever.
👎👎 silly @MarketplaceAPM http://t.co/KIN68VoevK
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Using copyright to keep repair manuals secret undermines circular economy
The Guardian
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
Usable Help - Don't tell me you love me
g2meyer.com
Don't tell me you love me 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?
g2meyer.com
Are we not men? 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
g2meyer.com
Books aren't dead yet 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
g2meyer.com
Simplified iOS 7 screen shots 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
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A stick figure explains cryptography Jeff Moser, an Indiana-based software engineer, has created A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption …