Saturday, November 6, 2004

Diluted doc? Good question: The Decline of the Manual. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] Ed Foster: Diluted Documentation. Are IT product vendors deliberately watering down the amount of information they provide in their documentation? Not only do a growing number of readers seem to think so, they have some interesting theories as to why reading the feeble manual no longer does much good. I think the answer is that yes, many vendors are providing less documentation. Why? Because it costs money to provide good documentation that addresses user needs, and it's hard to do well. Doc is not a profit center in most companies. But they can make money from selling training, from consulting fees, from charging to customize the applications, from charging for premium support. And as much as we (yes, us technical communicators, the people who write that dwindling supply of doc) work to justify our existence as making good business sense, it's hard to do in a direct and compelling way. Even the user experience folks have trouble justifying themselves. 5:56:43 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Little ia, Big IA. . . I'll admit I don't really understand this issue, so I'm posting it to remind myself to read this: T-model: Big IA is now UX. "(...) it is time we re-label the field of Big IA into User Experience." (Peter Boersma) [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] 5:49:33 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

QOTD "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" Steven Wright. [Quotes of the Day] 9:51:57 AM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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