Posts Tagged ‘user assistance’

Respondents needed for user research authoring-tools

{ Posted on Mar 06 2010 by annegentle }
1 Comment
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Categories : social media
Today's post is from four graduate students from communication and information sciences at Radboud University in the Netherlands. If you work, or ever worked, with Author-it, RoboHelp, MadCap Flare or Help&Manual, we hope that you are willing to participate in user ...Read More »

Focus on the User

{ Posted on Feb 10 2010 by annegentle }
6 Comments
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Categories : social media, techpubs, tools, wiki
I've published a long-ish article on the WritersUA site where I describe techniques for user assistance that let the user participate. It starts with simple techniques such as comments and moves towards community documentation efforts. Please read and share Putting ...Read More »

How you learn to use Google Wave

{ Posted on Oct 12 2009 by annegentle }
3 Comments
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Categories : social media
Since I write user assistance for a living, I'm naturally drawn to the devices the Google Wave team is implementing in order to teach people how to use Google Wave. For me, there were a few waves in my inbox from ...Read More »

Does designing content for scanning devalue the content?

{ Posted on Jun 14 2009 by annegentle }
7 Comments
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Categories : social media, techpubs, tools
I just read a great post by Rajesh Setty on the Lateral Action blog called 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online. Maybe it's because I'm in the final countdown before my book is permanently affixed to the pulp ...Read More »

Casual users and Power users – what type of online help do they want?

{ Posted on May 11 2009 by annegentle }
10 Comments
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Categories : techpubs
I have been scanning through some of the presentations at the STC Summit that I had to miss due to the packed schedule, and Scott DeLoach's presentation, Best Practices for Developing User Assistance caught my eye. He has slide after ...Read More »

Author-it and MadCap Flare comparison

{ Posted on Feb 10 2009 by annegentle }
11 Comments
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Categories : techpubs, tools
I've had more than a few questions asking for a review of Author-it or MadCap Flare or a comparison of both. So I decided to do some homework. Initially, I wasn't sure why they are categorized together. Is it due ...Read More »

Examples of blogs as online help and release notes

{ Posted on Feb 05 2009 by annegentle }
5 Comments
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Categories : techpubs
I'm always on the lookout for examples of social media tools used to write and maintain online help. One trend I think I am seeing is the use of blogs as the basic release notes for new features in products, ...Read More »

Publish a Word outline using Author-it

{ Posted on Jul 17 2008 by annegentle }
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Categories : techpubs, tools, work
At ASI, we're working on book skeletons while we do task analysis for new documentation or feature updates that may change the way users do their work with iMIS. So, to get early feedback, we wanted a way to publish ...Read More »

Wiki as online help source

{ Posted on Apr 18 2008 by annegentle }
1 Comment
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Categories : social media, techpubs, writing
A response to the question, Wiki-to-Help? on the Help Authoring Tool Yahoo Group. One of our test engineers (and the lead developer of our company wiki) just approached me with the idea of using our company's internal wiki as the central ...Read More »

Can DITA train writers? Or does it require too much programming?

{ Posted on Feb 13 2008 by annegentle }
7 Comments
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Categories : writing
DITA for writers (content creators) I just did a search on amazon.com for books for beginning technical writers and also to investigate what books are being written for our profession and for others wanting to start in our profession. I came ...Read More »
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