The Humane Experience

Design for the Primary User Assistance Experience-- How do you architect a Help experience? Well, the common wisdom is to design it around t...

Iterative Design and Big Boxes-- A couple of decades ago, at the early part of my technical communication career, I developed and delivered ...

There's a new name on the scene that you should be looking out for (in about twenty years or so). Ella Pari Hughes, born at 7:29 this mo...

Chinking-- I've created a new term, chinking , to mean: Breaking a topic into atomic chunks and then making the user get to them through...

Is It Help or Is It a Pop Quiz?-- I love the Southern expression, "Bless their hearts." It's kind-hearted, but with a tinge of...

Atlanta Currents a Big Energizer for Me-- I freely admit that I went to this year's Atlanta STC Currents with low expectations. I'm ...

Column Debut-- I now have a regular column in UXMatters called "User Assistance: Putting Help in Context." By the way, if you eve...

Chris Anderson and I were having lunch this week... Not at the same table, mind you. He was at the VIP table at the front of the room and I ...

In Defense of a Populist Grammar-- My blog today will not be popular with most of my audience (ironically, given its title). I invite all wh...

In Memoriam-- I normally refrain from using this blog for personal ramblings, but this morning's news announced what is a deep and perso...

It's Aliiiiive!!-- I've recently become sensitive to an apparent fault in my writing: I'm guilty of anthropomorphism, i.e., the ...

Users! They've been around for centuries apparently--- The book

Has Web 2.0 made affordances like so yesterday?-- Granted, the fact that I am 57 years old might be a contributing factor here, but I am se...

Progressive User Adoption (redux)-- I'm in an all-week training session learning how to do contextual design. Very neat stuff, by the wa...

The Rules Are Changing-- Want to get excited again about being a technical communicator? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0...

Progressive User Adoption-- For those who were patient and let me ramble on last month about progressive user adoption, you might want to lo...

Shut Up and Talk-- A colleague sent a clip from an academic website that lists its latest banned words. It reminded me what I don't like...

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...