Our client’s fire risk assessment report generator goes live this week

In the UK, every building, apart from private single dwellings, needs to be assessed for fire risk every three years. To do this, a fire risk assessor will assess the building and write a report on their findings and recommendations. For offices, these reports can be 30 pages long, and it can take an assessor… Read more »

What word clouds can tell you about your user guides

Someday, some clever person will do a statistical analysis of the frequency of words contained in different user guides to help us gain a better understanding of how to make the best user guide possible. In the meantime, we can use Wordle to give us a glimpse into a few user manuals. Wordle generates “word… Read more »

Creating more engaged users

As part of my prep for my presentation on user documentation as a more emotional experience for the user, I revisited this presentation by Kathy Sierra. This hasn’t ‘made the cut’ into my presentation due to lack of time, so I thought I’d post it here.

An innovative approach for a user manual from Samsung

Here is a very innovative approach to providing a user guide, from Samsung : According to Vitamin Design: These books actually contain the phone. Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone…. Read more »

If your business ever has to stand in front of a judge..

If your business ever has to stand in front of a judge, you may regret believing the documentating of procedures didn’t matter. When things go wrong, people ask “where’s it written down?” You’ll find them looking at what’s documented to see where the blame lies.  If it’s not written down, or if it’s unclear, then the… Read more »