Mark Baker’s post, Why documentation analytics may misread, presents an appealing argument about why it doesn’t matter if just a few people read the manual. In his post, Mark argues that a small number of key influencers who read the manual can share the knowledge with a much larger group who do not read the manual. The effect of the manual, therefore, disseminates out to … more »

Here are my slides from the STC webinar I presented on organizing content (findability). The official title of the webinar was “Organizing Content: Breaking Out of Topic-Based Hierarchies.”  I added detailed notes for each slide. This should make the presentation understandable even without the audio recording. You can download the presentation in two formats: PDF format PowerPoint format Feb 19, 2012 update:You can listen to the … more »

In my last post on wikis, Mark Baker added an astute comment: I’m not a wiki fan myself — I’m a structured text guy bred in the bone — but I am fascinated by the trend, and by the variety reactions to it. Wikis started more as a cultural statement than a technology. They were a tool for the democratization of content, the intent being … more »

In Designing Search, Greg Nudelman explains that one of the most overlooked places to help users who can’t find information is the page that appears when no search results are found. Greg writes, After the system indicates that the no search results condition occurred, it must now help the customer recover. Whenever you display a no search results page, always provide a helpful way forward … more »

He mentioned this during one of our lazy afternoon meetings, which dragged on much longer than the scheduled time. The central problem of writing help, my colleague Derek explained, is how you make it so Joe user can find the answer to his one question among 50,000 other answers in the help. Every user seems to have the one or two questions he or she … more »

The following is a guest post by Mark Baker. The a-ha moment came for me reading David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous, a book Tom and I both admire. Weinberger’s central thesis is that miscellany has become more powerful than order. No one ordering of information is ideal for every reader. The web allows readers to find information for themselves, and to organize it for themselves … more »

It’s been about 9 days since my last post, and yesterday my colleague leaned over and asked why I hadn’t been posting — was something wrong? He himself has been working on a novel, so he hasn’t posted anything for a month. No, nothing is wrong. I always chuckle when I see blog posts in which people apologize for not posting on their blog, or … more »