One of the questions I am often asked about Every Page is Page One is whether it simply means write articles instead of books. But while articles are certainly much closer to the EPPO model than books, there is something more to EPPO than simply writing articles. EPPO is also about the relationships between articles/topics/pages… Read More »
Once the reader reaches an Every Page is Page One page, does it still matter if the site is well organized? It depends on what you mean by “organized”. This is another in the series of post dealing with questions from my TC Dojo Webinar on bottom-up information architecture. Q: I understand that the site… Read More »
An interesting article in Popular Science charts the rise and laments the fall of the manual. Instructions Not Included: What the Disappearance of the Common Manual Says About Us, traces the origins of the manual as a form of technical communication, and notes how many products now come with no manual. It draws from this dire… Read More »
I am very grateful to Jonatan Lundin for a lengthy conversation on the subject of topic patterns because it helped me to crystalize something important about the basis for the principles of EPPO information design and how they are derived. Approaches based on psychology Traditionally, theories of information design have been psychologically based. Researchers (usually… Read More »
Hierarchy as a form of content organization is dying. A major milestone — I want to say tombstone — in its demise is the shutdown of the Yahoo directory, which will occur at the end of the year according to an article in Ars Technica, Yahoo killing off Yahoo after 20 years of hierarchical organization. (Actually it… Read More »
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: When content is a utility the job of the tech writer is to ensure reliability of supply. In my earlier post, Content as Furniture, I suggested that while content used to be furniture — something to be acquired selectively and displayed as a prized possession (and a mark of status) — it is rapidly becoming a… Read More »
A lot of the information design being done in technical communications today is what I think we can fairly call a linear/hypertext hybrid. Perhaps this is a necessary stage in our evolution from static linear paper manuals to dynamic hypertext information sets, but if so we have lingered in it far too long, and we… 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 »
Hypertext means more than just text with a bunch of links in it Hypertext is something of a neglected subject these days. Everyone is talking about the Web, but nobody is talking about the class of thing the Web is: a hypertext environment. But to neglect this essential fact about the nature of the Web… Read More »