Summary: Designing information for paper was largely about managing reference distance. On the Web, the reference distance is zero. A completely different set of design requirements apply. Linear information design Traditional information design thinking has always been linear. This is a consequence of the medium in which the vast majority of information was presented:… Read More »
Summary: Content is no longer furniture; it is a utility. We have to learn to treat it as such. I am in the last throes of our move from Ottawa to Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, which involves moving a lot of content. Boxes and boxes of great heavy lumps of paper and ink content. Great gaping room-swallowing… Read More »
One of the most important distinctions we need to make when writing for the Web is the difference between how texts are related and how subjects are related. If that sentence made you say “Huh?”, let me explain. In the book world, the principal reason for one book to refer to another book or article… Read More »
My Book is currently in the technical review stage — meaning that people who I and the publisher respect have been asked to read and comment on the full draft. It is a humbling, daunting, and also energizing experience, and I am deeply grateful to the reviewers for their time, energy, and expertise. One of… Read More »
Tom Johnson started the discussion with Structured authoring versus the web. Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle took it up in Structured authoring AND the Web. My turn: Structured authoring FOR the Web. One of my long term grievances is that structured authoring has been adopted piecemeal. Rather than approaching it holistically as a method that can provide a wide… Read More »
One of the most difficult aspects of moving content to the Web is that webs are not organized like other things — books in particular. And the difference is not small. It is not that web organization is somewhat different from book organization. It is so different that you can’t even look at web organization… Read More »
Which media is your principal design target? Most tech pubs organizations deliver to multiple media, but which one do they design for? Judging by the content I see every day, most organizations are still designing for paper even when they mostly deliver to the Web. If you are delivering primarily to the Web, shouldn’t you be designing primarily for the Web?… Read More »
Working with my current client has really reinforced for me how much traditional documentation methods involve flattening reality. The client is dealing with a large body of troubleshooting information, in which there are complex relationships between issues the user experiences, the symptoms that help narrow down the issue, the configurations under which symptoms can occur, and the… Read More »
There is a long-running radio program on the BBC called Desert Island Discs that asks celebrities what recordings they would take with them if they were going to be stranded on a desert island. Today, the question does not make as much practical sense as when it was first broadcast in 1942. As long as… Read More »
One of the most neglected aspects of the discussion of topic-based writing is that of provenance. Every technical document has provenance of some kind. It may be a highly structured and elaborate provenance, such as certification according to a standard performed by an outside agency, or it may be the implicit provenance of being published… Read More »