The closing keynote presentation of TCUK 2010, made by J Haynes, Chairman of the Haynes Publishing Group, contained advice useful not only to those creating manuals but also to any organisation looking to communicate information to others. John went through the 50 year history of Haynes, publishers of the Haynes manuals, and explained the reason for the company’s… Read more »
Category: Technical Communication
Will online video replace the written user guide?
TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of Web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” – a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. He claims What Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication…Information often can be taken in… Read more »
Understanding how people learn – the Affective Context Model
Nick Shackleton-Jones, Manager of Online & Informal Learning at the BBC, has created a video explaining the Affective Context Model and what it means for learning. He talks about how emotion plays a part in the way we learn. This provides me with an opportunity to highlight my presentation at the TCUK conference, “Documentation as… Read more »
Reducing IT support call times
At the Documentation Managers peer group meeting we hosted earlier this week, one manager commented his organisation was aiming to increase the average time for each support call. This was because it believed it could eliminate all the short duration calls – through redesigning the software and better user documentation. What would be left would be… Read more »
How checklists can save your life
Dr Atul Gawande is currently in London, touring the radio stations to promote his book “The Checklist Manifesto“. Dr Gawande is a surgeon in Boston Mass., who has been looking at how to deal with complexity in surgery and elsewhere. He has discovered that complex systems work, mostly through people using checklists. Furthermore, no matter… Read more »