In my last post, The Technical Writer as an Outsider, I argued that being an outsider to a project gives you a valuable perspective about the gaps, problems, inconsistencies, and other issues in an interface, so you can do a better job documenting it for other outsiders. After writing the post, I tried to embrace the outsider mindset and hunker down at my desk to … more »

In this video, I talk with Joe Welinski from WritersUA about strategies for entering the mobile market, particularly in landing contracts for iPhone and iPad application help and user interface design. Joe runs the WritersUA conference each year.

Most people take time off during the holidays, so if you don’t, you end up mostly sitting alone at work, wondering why you’re not taking time off too. I wanted to follow Penelope Trunk’s advice about pursuing your pet projects while working during the holidays, but instead I was trying to finish a project with an end-of-year deadline. The project I’m working on is critical, … more »

Sometimes the audience for my help consists of seniors in the range of 60 to 85 years old. The other night I attended an orientation session with users to introduce them to a new application we were releasing. As part of the orientation, I observed first-hand the challenges that seniors have with computers. Here are a few user interface problems:

Rilynn from New England writes, Tom, I notice that a lot of companies use release notes to post a list of defects (bug) that were fixed with the corresponding software release. This is something that I appreciate as a software user. I realize that I’m not the user of my company’s products, though. Also, management at my company is really against adopting this practice, seeing … more »

Lessons in interface design from Apple by Communications from DMN.