Monday, July 5, 2004

When help doesn't Help would be nice, if I had time. If every device and product in your house needs technical support, who has time to read the manuals? And if you do, will the documentation tell you what you need to know? [Usable Help] I was going to blog this one earlier, but Gordon beat me to it. Dean Takahashi, in a piece from this morning's SJ Mercury News, says he just doesn't have the five minutes it would take to read the documentation to solve his problem. If he doesn't have the time, what good is it for us to write even-more-usable help? The answers should be placed right in front of the user's face: in the interface, built into the product, or at least intuitable from the controls. We can't make users read if they're not willing to. Most of what Dean complains about are design or integration issues. Better help doesn't solve those; better design does. 9:15:16 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

War, what is it good for? Dave, Doc, and Dave all point to Britt Blaser discussing the horrors of war. Britt quotes Eisenhower repeatedly; the selected quotations demonstrate to me that Ike was a much better president than Bush is. Bush and company don't seem to get the reality of war. Ike knew it first-hand. 8:58:36 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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