Nuggets O’Wisdom for the Mobile Help Developer

I love the LinkedIn forums. Once you wade a few past sales pitches and “Hey look at me!” posts, you often find some useful information. The world is fast-paced and ever-changing, but I still subscribe to the “nugget” of information approach to learning. I can only take in so much at one time, after all!

Today’s nugget: a link to a Gallery of iPhone Help. There you see help in panels, menus of help, help with nice layout and design, all the bells and whistles — and a couple fails.

My Epic Fail award goes to “How To Play” – a screen full of small text telling one how to play a game about an Enchanted Chalice. Not a graphic to be found … I don’t want to play that game, if it is that hard to learn.

Not a great help screen for a mobile device.

Of course, one can make all the same mistakes in mobile help as in PC or web application help, or even in printed materials:

What's the readability score with this many icons???

I don’t really have a top choice — so here some I really liked, with a little comment about why.

This one makes me laugh. Really.

Here's one that is actually appropriate for its content.

And the minimalist approach. No words. Just do it!

Effective - enough info to do something in the app, attractive layout, not too busy.

Other Useful Gleanings

Take a look at DashCode – a tool provided with the Mac OS X library. According to Joe Welinske, “is an interactive editor that helps you combine HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create web applications. You can do a lot of things with Dashcode but one of the pre-designed templates has some interesting possibilities for mobile user assistance.”

Of cells and internets: a pre-review of “The Information” by James Gleick

I just started reading this book (“The Information: A History. A Theory. A Flood.” By James Gleick. ) and it is fascinating.

“The universe, the 18th-century mathematician and philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert said, “would only be one fact and one great truth for whoever knew how to embrace it from a single point of view.” James Gleick has such a perspective, and signals it in the first word of the title of his new book, “The Information,” using the definite article we usually reserve for totalities like the universe, the ether — and the Internet. Information, he argues, is more than just the contents of our overflowing libraries and Web servers. It is “the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” of the world. Human consciousness, society, life on earth, the cosmos — it’s bits all the way down.”  NY Times Review

Not that these ideas are new, or new to me. I have stumbled across various thoughts along these lines over the past several years, perhaps as many as 10 years, but here it all is in a bold, wide-ranging 500+ page book. I’ve been in workshops where writers who work in memoir or journaling speak of ‘cellular memory.’ (Past-life evangelists like that idea, while others call it psuedo-scientific. Still, it’s an alluring concept. What if?) This book addresses the idea of DNA/RNA as memory.

The “Information Age” was announced as the next “revolution” along the lines of the Industrial Revolution. But that really only encompassed computing machinery, at least initially. Peter Drucker has an interesting take on the role of e-commerce in this Information Revolution (long, but a highly informative read). This book takes the idea of information way beyond computing, beyond the internet.

I’m looking forward to reading more of how these thoughts evolved for Gleik, maybe for all of us. I loved the section I read on the inventor/theorist who put forth the idea of the “bit”. I love the ‘fractals’ I see in the table of contents: the reflection of the human nervous system onto the globe (ch 5), “Life’s Own Code” (ch 10, the genetic information discussion) juxtaposed next to “Into the Meme Pool” (ch 11) …

Reading it? Let’s dialogue!

Coffee and chocolate and writing, oh my!

Now, wait! Before you decide this is your average, wow-chocolate-makes-everything-better-blog, let go of your preconceptions.

I visited the Dunn Bros. in my building this morning. I actually wanted a raspberry white chocolate scone, but they were out. When I prevaricated, the owner pointed out the chocolate croissants, saying they were still warm. I took one. He joked with the cashier that he knew he could ‘hook’ me. I ordered my latte just the way I like it (nonfat, sugar-free almond) and exchanged pleasant comments with the cashier about the fact that yes, it was getting closer to being Friday.

The thing about this coffee shop is that I go there for the experience as much as the coffee. I know, it is a chain. We also have a Starbucks in the building, and honestly, I like their coffee better. But the baristas at Starbucks – while really nice and efficient — are young, and frankly, a little impersonal. Everyone working at Dunn Bros. wears funky clothes, the kind I would wear if I didn’t work on the 10th floor of an office building. I’m greeted with a smile, a real smile, as in, hey glad you came back. Really. The sound of beans swishing in the gigantic roaster blends so nicely with the quiet hum of conversations around the beat-up wood tables. I think of the many enlightening conversations I’ve had at those very tables.

Sure I paid $6 for a medium coffee and an absolutely delightful, warm chocolate croissant. I also paid for that feeling of belonging, albeit in a simple way, to the fellowship of coffee.

Walking to the elevator, I realized this was the answer to a question that’s been bugging me for a long time. People put up with less-than-perfect product and documentation for the experience of belonging.  Community is the secret behind open source software, like Eclipse, or crowd-sourced documentation, like Floss Manuals. It’s why shows like Buffy continue to have loyal followers long after they go off the air.

People connect. They do something meaningful together, have a shared experience. It places their lives, even momentarily, in some kind of context.

As a writer, as a help engineer, then, what’s my take-away? Simple: give up the need to eliminate all typos, and document every single feature. (That way lies insanity in today’s complex and fast-paced world, anyhow!) Do a good enough job on the things you offer to your audience, and spend some of your time understanding how your work can help build that context for the user, make them feel like part of something important while they use the product. The medium — wiki, PDF, embedded UA — isn’t really as important as the experience of continuity and support, and the opportunity to connect, that the user gets from your work.

Play IS their work

I don’t know how many times I was told this about my children — by Montessori preschool teachers, child-rearing books, even my mother (the very well trained grade school teacher and expert on teaching reading).

Play is their work, it is what they are supposed to be doing.

It’s how they learn.

Observe a group of kids in the sandbox, a Montessori classroom, in the family play-room. They absorb information — frogs come in many colors, snakes have scales, grass is slippery when wet. They learn concepts and practice skills — counting (you got three, I only got one), addition (give me one more and I’ll have the same as you), physics (that last block made the tower fall).

And they learn behaviors. Call them processes; sometimes that’s what they work out. They learn how to solve problems and get what they want. They learn what is OK and what is not.

It works for me! I’m learning weaving and knitting right now. I simply pick up a skein of yarn whose look and feel appeals to me. Sometimes I dig out a pattern (documentation) and sometimes I don’t. A big component: I connect socially and learn new things from wonderfully fun people I meet who share my obsessive love of, need for, string. Overall, it is fun.

I know the world of Azeroth and how to play a warlock in great detail. Before you laugh, see You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired! Read a bit of
NCTIES 2011 – A Hero’s Journey – Play and Pedagogy in World of Warcraft.
Look at this Wikipedia article. Or this blog. All kinds of learning going on in and  around one (albeit large) online game …

I can feel the warmth of garden dirt on my hands even before I plant anything in the ground. I understand the interplay of colors because all my life I have mixed and matched and stirred color into things – even cake frosting.*

Why then is it so difficult to learn a new programming language, or accounting principles, or to program a remote control? Why does one need a book, a good set of websites, a teacher, or step-by-step instructions?

And so I consider application of the idea of play, of gaming, to content designed to help folks learn and problem-solve. There is so very much information floating around out there, that I have *almost* given up on technical writing as a means of communication. We need better ways to absorb information, learn systems, and find help with problem-solving.

This morning, I received a link to a nice article on game play and content. As the poster mentioned on LinkedIn, Woody Allen once said, “There is no scientific evidence to support the notion that life should be taken seriously.”

Game on!

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* While still in grade school, my sister and I once made a purple cake, with purple frosting. We did not repeat that experiment, although she later took a formal cake decorating class and I studied and worked as a food engineer for a few years. I’ve always been grateful for a mother who allowed experimentation and children in the kitchen, together!

Could A Computer Do Your Job? I hope so!

Could A Computer Do Your Job? : Planet Money : NPR.

Actually these days I’m looking for more ways to tell a computer how to do my job. It could just be one form of arrival at the “teach” end of the old “learn-do-teach” cycle, I suppose.

Intelligent content.

It’s a rather hot phrase, in tech writing circles at least. There’s so much that software knows about itself, if one could just harvest that in human-readable format!

Take the proprietary pattern language my company uses. Several very intelligent folks write parser code to interpret and build and run programs out of this high-level specification language. The patterns are interpreted by the machine over and over. And yet, documenting the patterns is a huge chore that no one ever quite budgets for.

Why can’t the computer tell me what I need to know?

So I’m digging for ways to improve that situation.

It’s a lot of fun!

Information development nirvana …

Searching for the perfect DITA editor. One that allows collaborative authoring. Free. Open Source. Easy to use, WYSIWYG, but also allowing access to the guts.

~turutosiya/en hosts a nice table of browser-based DITA editors. Unfortunately he doesn’t mention pricing, license, or whether the support collaboration.

Today while my applications build, I’m going to try out Firedocs, and maybe the eLML add-on for eLessons.

Every time I check into this topic, the number of ‘easy’ DITA editors grows. Sooner or later, I will find nirvana!

Long overdue update …

Wow, it’s been a year!

I’m still writing away, but now I’ve walked into an expanded role at work, that involves working with Eclipse and a developer audience. Some of my work is help-related, and some is just general knowledge transfer. I also maintain a test product line.

I’m starting my second Java programming class tonight, and beginning to work on some programs to (eventually) turn into iPhone (or other phone) apps.

As usual things that seemed so important a year ago have sorta faded, partly due to a change in focus on the job, and partly because sometimes corporate gears move too slowly. DITA and the wiki remain elusive goals for my work, so I’ve shifted focus to where I can make a difference: the developer tool environment.

Well, off to finish the registration process for class, and to see what this semester holds!