Chris Edwards has written an article on product design in the E&T magazine called “The art of avoiding lemons“, in which he looks at whether there is more to product design than simply getting your design to look good or your product to work. He shows there are many situations where brilliantly designed products still… Read more »
Tag: trends
Open source survey reveals the value of community-based Help
Actuate’s August 2009 Open Source Survey reported users see community-based Help as one of the key benefits of adopting open source software. The benefits of adoption for the 1,500 respondents were: Community-based Help (33.2%) Access to source code (72.6%) Built on open platforms (63.9%) Scalability (57.2%) Flexibility (54.3%) Not locked into Microsoft (40.9%) Standards-based technology… Read more »
Transatlantic video interview with Anne Gentle on the Social Web for Documentation
We’ve just uploaded a 15 minute extract from a transatlantic video interview I recently conducted with Anne Gentle, where we talked about The Social Web for Documentation. The sound is a little patchy on the first slide, but it improves afterwards. A longer, 37 minute, version will be available to anyone who purchases the Cherryleaf Learning Zone… Read more »
Embedding videos into printed instruction manuals
Pepsi is pioneering the use of new technology that embeds video adverts in printed magazines. According to the Financial Times, the video starts when the reader turns to the appropriate page. See CBS and Pepsi bring video ads to printed page and CBS to run video ad in magazine this fall If it could be… Read more »
Review of Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation
We were sent a review copy of Anne Gentle’s book , Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation (www.xmlpress.net). Anne has been a pioneer in developing technical documentation that includes Web 2.0 concepts, so I read it with great interest. It’s a book that provides practical advice on how to add user generated content… Read more »