Better than Free: User Documentation?

Kevin Kelly has posted an interesting post called “Better Than Free.” It’s about what succeeds in a market where most assets are free. “The internet is a copy machine….When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.When copies are free, you need… Read more »

The ROI of documentation and support

In two conversations this week, the issue of “how do you measure the value of documentation?” has come up. The benefits of user documentation (reduced support calls, increase in the perceived value of the product, happier customers, better customer retention, increase product usage etc) can be identified, but it can be hard to measure them… Read more »

121s – review

Our first day of 121 meetings went really well yesterday. It’s always a surprise what ideas and suggestions other people have, and it’s always a pleasure to give advice and feedback. Everyone turned up early – is that a technical author trait, I wonder? No-one got lost; everyone found us. We’ll be scheduling more dates… Read more »

The user assistance skill set

We were having a clearout when I found a handout from a presentation made by Joe Welinske on the user assistance skill set. Although this presentation must have been made four or five years ago, it still rings true today. According to Joe’s survey, the skill set of for user assistance comprises: Writing Editing Indexing… Read more »

Technical Authors and the right to remix

One feature of Web 2.0 is the idea of the “right to remix”. This means giving people the ability to remix your information and services. This could impact the documentation department in two ways: 1. Your organisation decides to allow others to remix and “mashup” its application or service. As part of this, the documentation… Read more »