API documentation: the undiscovered country

Recording from UAEurope 2017 conference. With many software developers now spending their time developing APIs, there’s an increasing demand for API documentation writers. It’s a fast changing field, with emerging information design patterns and authoring tools. It’s also different from end user documentation, and this means many Technical Communicators are uncertain if and how they… Read more »

Our process for creating elearning videos

I will be talking at the Technical Communications UK 2014 conference (TCUK14) next month about creating videos for technical communication and elearning videos. It covers how to embed video in a course. The delegates see, in each recorded module, a video of the trainer on the right of the screen, with the slides, application walkthroughs… Read more »

Ellis to speak about documentation as an emotional experience at TCUK 2010

Ellis Pratt, Sales and Marketing Director at Cherryleaf, will be speaking at this year’s Technical Communication UK conference on “Documentation as an emotional experience for the user”. Many organisations are starting to look at creating a ‘customer experience strategy’. This is management-speak for generating customer advocacy, brand loyalty and an emotional attachment to a product or company…. Read more »

“The worst Help system I have ever seen”

Sarah Maddox reported from the WritersUA conference that Microsoft’s April Reagan gave a frank presentation on the planning and design that has gone into version 3 of Microsoft Help. She was quoted as saying the feedback on the Help 2 (used in Windows Vista) was poor. For example, “This is the worst help system I have ever seen”.  At a previous… Read more »

Online Help Conference Europe 2007 report for technical authors

Last week’s Online Help Conference Europe 2007 was a great success and great fun. 1. There seems to be an overall consensus on the future direction of online user assistance/online Help: – Don’t expect Microsoft to lead with new standard Help technologies that we can all adopt.– A move towards more portal based information support.–… Read more »