We noticed last week a few tweets in our Twitter stream about how technical documentation and user assistance will be turning into a conversation. A dictionary definition of conversation is: 1. The spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings; talk. 2. An informal discussion. Informal, verbal, interactive, spontaneous communication is quite different from pretty much all forms… Read more »
Category: online communities
What does Stack Overflow’s success mean for traditional User Assistance?
Last night, I saw Joel Spolsky speak at a London Enterprise Technology Meetup, held at the London School of Economics. Joel is one of the founders of Stack Overflow, a hugely popular question-and-answer website on the topic of computer programming. He also claimed in a blog post back in April 2000, no-one reads manuals (see our… Read more »
New design models for providing end user Help
Ray Gallon has recently completed a series of webinars looking at new models for providing end user Help (A Cognitive Design for User Assistance). In the third webinar, Ray looked at how people learn today and he suggested a new approach for the future. He used The Common European Framework of Reference for Language‘s description of… Read more »
Education technology – Is this also the future for Technical Authors?
(Click on the image to enlarge) Edudemic has created an infographic outlining the likely future for education. Other education sites, such as Grockit.com, suggest the future of study will have three main strands: spend some time with experts spend time on your own, and spend time with your peers If education follow this path, will… Read more »
Unifying conversation and instruction in business communication
One of the challenges organisations face is how to create a system that unifies all the different ways its staff communicate information. That’s because conversation (written and oral) can be very different from instructional information. For example, conversations are often reflective, insightful and repetitive, whereas instructions are typically results-driven, concise and commanding. We can see… Read more »