The Humane Experience

Instructional Text on the User Interface: Some Counter Intuitive Implications-- User assistance occurs within an action context (the user do...

Instructive Labels-- I should have learned by now not to trust my instincts. Instincts are often the manifestation of programmed learning, w...

Expert Guidance in User Assistance-- Those who read my ramblings in this blog on this topic, can read a more coherent discussion in my artic...

Happy New Year-- And speaking of new year, the theme of the January issue of SIGCHI's magazine, Interactions , is "Help: User assis...

Progressive User Adoption: More thoughts on building an adoption profile-- Before moving off the topic of laying out a suggested progression...

Progressive Adoption Principle 2: Establish an Adoption Profile-- The secret to progressive adoption is to stop thinking of adoption as a Ye...

Principles of Progressive Adoption-- In my last blog entry I introduced the concept of progressive user adoption, moving a user further alon...

Progressive User Adoption-- I'd like to start a series of entries about the role that user assistance can play in what I call progressiv...

Given-New vs. Analogy-- Today's blog is for die-hard writers who get a buzz from talking about rhetoric. No tools or technology today; I...

Gap Analysis-- Sometimes we operate under the false myth that we must write user assistance for the lowest common denominator. I think this ...

Why I'm Not a Technical Writer-- And as Jerry Seinfeld would say, "Not that there'd be anything wrong with that." But I n...

Research, Periscopes, Cable TV, CSI, and Goldilocks-- In a tryptophan-induced semi coma this weekend, I experienced a convergence that tied ...

Metadiscourse-- [ Warning: Taking any of the advice in today's blog could prevent you from winning awards in publication competitions .]...

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle-- Heisenberg says the more accurately we know where an electron is, the less accurately we can know wha...

No Wonder Good Help Is Hard to Find-- I attended a delightful presentation at the local STC meeting last night called "Why I Didn't...

Getting a Backbone-- I'm working right now on what will be essentially a getting started workbook. It will probably consists of an inter...

Dumb or Brilliant?--- This one has me pondering. We have a user interface where the user can enter IP addresses. If the user wishes to enter...

An Old Standard Revisited: Flow-Charting-- My earliest exposure to flow charts was as trouble-shooting aids. As I watched people use them, t...

Applications as Tools-- In one of my earliest blogs I pointed out that the term "user" implied something "used." Part of...

What's Your Underlying World View?-- Philisophically, technical writers fall into two epistemological camps (hey! it's my blog; I ca...