Month: April 2008

bookmark_borderDesign matters

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Why would you choose to make something difficult to use? Are you deliberately putting barriers in the road? Or are you just forgetting the main reason why people pick up a document or manual?

Long ago, when I had just started out as a technical writer, I attended a course on designing for Print. It covered many things, from typography to layout and I still use some of the basic design rules I learned way back then.

Whitespace, choice of font, and hierarchical indentation can help make a document more readable. Clearly delineating the structure of a document without explicitly stating it as such, leaving visual clues to help the reader navigate the page (presuming you’ve covered the multiple navigation routes they’ll take to get to that page of information).

Such considerations will continue to become more important as more and more information is moved online, and is then available in a variety of media formats and devices. Structuring your content, and using visual clues to convey that structure clearly, will become ever more important.

At this point there starts to become an obvious overlap with usability, pushing technical writers to start thinking more in terms of the user experience than simple task analysis allows. Understanding the reasoning behind a user action will become equally important, and can be passed to development to influence the UI as well as directly impacting on how we present technical information in the future.

Beyond that I’m not sure where else this may take us but I do know that part of the reason I love this job is the cross-over we have with so many other professions/industries, and I can’t wait to see what is next over the horizon.

bookmark_borderModern Life is Rubbish

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Kitchen is almost finished. Last bit of tiling is getting done on Monday, most of the flooring will go down over the weekend, then it’s a couple of touch up jobs with a paintbrush, a little wallpaper and we’re done!!

I’ve sent off my letter of complaint and received a phone call following up to tell me they had received it and I will receive a written response soon. So that’s moving on nicely, and my altercation with a taxi is now in the hands of the Glasgow City Council licensing board.

Work has been increasingly busy these past couple of weeks, hence the paucity of updates here, it’s all I can do to stay awake long enough to eat dinner sometimes. It’s been great though, and I’m really starting to grow into the role (now that I’ve kind of figured out what my role is!). Plenty about that on my other blog mind you.

And speaking of blogs, I’ve been making a conscious effort to get back to commenting again. Yes it’s easy to say that you are still reading but sometimes that little comment counter can make a huge difference to your blogging mojo. It’s the little things that make a difference.

So, just got my health to sort out then we’ll have a semblance of order resorted (results of tests due tomorrow). I’ve almost completely eliminated “additional salt” from my diet, it’s taken a bit to get used to it but I certainly notice it when it’s been added. Hopefully that, plus the diuretic (bendroflumethiazide if you must know) will bring my blood pressure out of the stratosphere it was operating within (195/122 at highest reading… but down to 174/114 about 10 days ago).

I’ve also made a conscious effort to relax and de-stress, but truth be told I don’t feel any different, a little easier to tire since I started the pills but… yeah… not much has changed. Aside from my diet of course, which also means I’ve lost a little weight… things are heading the right way.

In other news, our cat is growing up. Looking back at photos from January he’s noticeably bigger and today he made his first kill!! A little baby starling. Shame really but we knew it would happen. Frankly I’m a little disappointed, it can’t have been much of a challenge so I’ve told him not to come back next time until he’s got one of the bloody magpies in his claws.

And that’s quite enough of that. As soon as I get the kitchen finished I’ll be starting a book clear-out, more on that… later.

bookmark_borderRound up the usual suspects

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I love movies. I love the thrill of them, the cinematography, the way they move you, the way they lift you up and make you soar, or the way they quietly affect you and alter your point of view.

I love big ridiculous blockbusters, loaded with special effects and noises, that don’t care about plot lines or character development, which require you to check your sense of disbelief in at the door.

I love subtle, story-driven movies that pull you along, relying on subtle emotions and plot points to convey a simple message.

I love complex thrillers, twisting and turning, bemusing me as I second guess the next scene, leaving me gasping at the final reveal.

I love old movies, caught in times past, evoking the glamour of Hollywood in lavish technicolour.

There are very few movies I won’t watch. Horror and I don’t get on too well but we have an agreement (I don’t choose to watch them very often, but when I do they try and be smart about how they scare me). And some movies just aren’t really anything, they’re aren’t bad enough to be addictive (all bad things are addictive!) nor good enough to stick in my brain.

I love movies.

Although I fear the tense has changed.

The problem is … and I guess it’s time I confess … well … you see, the thing about movies and I is … well we seem to have had a falling out. One of those “he said”, “she said” arguments that never lead anywhere and start from nothing. I’m not sure how it happened really, I can’t pinpoint it but, well, I guess sometimes you just move on, eh?

Thing is … and don’t tell the movies this… but I kinda miss them, I don’t want to move on. I miss the anticipation, I miss the stories, I miss the happy endings, the sad endings, the laughing and the crying.

Awww to heck with it, movies, if you are out there, and you are listening, please PLEASE COME BACK TO ME!!! Maybe one of my old friends will hear my plea… Shawshank for example, he was always pretty dependable…

bookmark_borderI am not a dictionary

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How many times in your professional career have you been asked to spell something, or asked if a word is hyphenated? How many times are you asked whether to use “that” or “which” in a sentence?

We are the grammar police, the word monkeys, and many of us revel in that role (if not the title). Typically we possess greater information about writing than anyone else in the company, and rightly so as it is the main focus of our job.

However I am trying to stop answering these questions directly, instead I’m trying to direct people towards an answer. The reasons are two-fold.

Firstly it’s always better if people learn things first hand, helping to break the dependency for the future. In other words it stops people relying on you to remember things for them. It stops you being asked the same question, over and over and over. That can be annoying.

Secondly, and this is a subtle point, it re-enforces the notion that ALL we do is write words, that all we consider is grammar and spelling, that all we bring to a development team are documents. I don’t know about you but that’s not the case for me, never has been and never will.

It’s easy to quickly hand out information when someone leans over your desk, but maybe we need to be a little more careful. As (typically) a minority group in a software development team we have to work hard to prove and maintain our value, so maybe we need to distance ourselves a little from such matters.

bookmark_borderElbow

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I really don’t know why I didn’t do this last week, and since a few other bloggers have since been to see them, and they share my view that this is very much a band to see live, I feel chagrined into writing up my thoughts about the Elbow gig I attended a couple of weeks ago at the ABC in Glasgow.

Elbow are one of those bands that kind of snuck up on me, I remember hearing some of their second album, including Fugitive Motel, nicked from someone at work and thinking they were OK. Next time I saw them was on TV when they were at Glastonbury a couple of years back, around the time their third album came out… and it was this appearance that prompted me to buy that album.

I’ll happily admit that after the first few lessons I put it to one side but quality refuses to be lost and it was soon back in rotation. The more I listened to it to the more I got from it, and the more I realised that this was a band that could soar along on some glorious melodies and that lyrically they were tantalisingly brilliant. A few choice lines here and there (“and coming home I feel like I, designed these buildings I walked by”) seemed to spark off my surroundings as I used them to buffer my daily commute.

I revisited their second album and found it deeper than I thought, and then ‘discovered’ their first album (I’d been under the presumption that Cast of Thousands was their first album!) and shortly after that they released their current album (which is number 4, do keep up). Then I heard they were touring.

I’ve made public statements that I will not be revisiting the SECC so, frankly, it doesn’t take much to tempt me to a gig elsewhere (which essentially means King Tuts, ABC, Carling Academy or the Barrowlands), so Elbow ticked the list when I heard they were playing at the ABC (a converted cinema).

Not entirely sure what to expect what I witnessed was a stunning gig, which switched easily from rocking tracks, to gloriously heartfelt lump-in-the-throat ballads, interspersed with some witty banter to keep the crowd going and even singing the bass guitarist happy birthday (which I fear is part of the ‘show’!). A few stand out moments include being able to hear the lead singer over the amplified voice from where I was near the back of the hall (might’ve been The Stops? not sure which track), and the confession that the track Mirrorball (on the new album) was actually named “The ABC Glasgow Mirrorball” after the “biggest fuckin Mirrorball I’ve ever seen” which is about 20ft in diameter and hangs from the ceiling in the ABC… “but don’t worry, that’s just between us, everyone else will think it’s just called Mirrorball… but we’ll know the truth!”.

So, a great gig from an excellent band, with a talented yet self-effacing frontman, delivering some well-honed tracks. Can’t ask for much more than that really, can you.

bookmark_borderFriday night

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To celebrate the recent release of our product, the Development group had a wee night out, as is our wont.

A few of us (you know, the sensible ones) congregated in a Pizza Express for some food then nipped across the road to catchup with everyone else in Stavka, a vodka bar. It was a good laugh, and we managed to stay out of the trap of talking about work… well not too much anyway. And, as is the mark of a good night out, there are some details that are only emerging from the fuzzy depths of my brain today.

For example I’d forgotten when Alan licked the foam off the top of Joan’s Guinness, when Shelly fell on the dancefloor later on, and that Sid and Davy ended up having a snog. That’s a good night out, when everyone is in the same happy go lucky mood.

Ohh and, obviously, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

That said it turns up that one of the last shots of the night WASN’T raspberry vodka after all… I’m not sure what it was but it was DEFINITELY that drink that tipped me over the edge.. honest.

Now just need to figure out who ended up going home with whom and I’ll have ALL the gossip. Hey, I work in ‘communications’, it’s important!