Last Sunday, I quickly sketched several GUI concepts in form of cartoon and posted them in Software GUI… Which is your one?.
Surprisingly, my serious colleagues on BOS shamed me for this sketch: “you failed”, “learn to create a comprehensible cartoon”, “too abstract”, and so on.
Anyway, I’m glad there is a discussion around this post though my love of abstractions played a cruel joke on me. I decided to explain some of my thoughts behind that image.
Software user interface is just a way to solve a problem and to reach a goal. If it’s done properly the way will be straight and easy. Otherwise you can make users to think about GUI itself rather than about goal achievement. Such GUI may become a problem itself. Let’s look at some common cases:
Read the rest of Software GUI… Which is your one? : Explained »
Click to enlargeLast week Indigo Byte Systems’ team visited UA Europe 2010 – The Conference for Software User Assistance Professionals that took part in Stockholm. The conference was produced by Matthew Ellison Consulting in association with Writers UA.
This year our company is a Gold Sponsor of UA Europe 2010. On the conference’s exhibition we introduced our flagship products Dr.Explain – help authoring tool and True BoxShot – virtual cover maker.
As we had to work on our exhibition booth mostly I couldn’t attend many valuable presentations. However, during the exhibition we had many interesting and insightful discussions with technical writers, translators, communicators, tool vendors (including competitors), and with other UA people. The main focus of the talks was “What do UA people expect today from software help systems and help authoring tools as well?”.
As a result, I’ve prepared a brief summary of what people want to see in a modern help tool. Here it is.
- Single source – multiple output formats
- Ability to create on-line help with search and indexes and it must be compatible with all web browsers
- Ability to add rich and interactive content: video, scripts, & flash
- Support of mobile platforms
- Multi-user & team-based editing and version control
- Conditional output
- Built-in tools for content localization
- Support of user contributed content
- Intergration with social networks & communities
- Better integration with other HAT & editing systems
One of the most interesting event of the conference was panel of leading help authoring tool vendors. It was a great discussion of current user assistance trends and technologies. Luckily, we have a video record of the panel. The panel chairman, Matthew Ellison kindly permitted us to share the record. The recording was a kind of improvisation and its quality isn’t perfect. However, I hope you will find it helpful and interesting anyway.
Direct link to the UA Europe 2010 playlist at Youtube.com
It was nice to meet everyone at the conference. See you soon at Tekom TCWorld 2010.
I’m currently following an interesting discussion in Sales/Marketing VP’s & Directors – Software & Technology group at LinkedIn.
The main question of the discussion is devoted to the most important things in the art of selling. Most of ISV and microISV do the marketing and sell their software or services on their own. So, they must pay attention to these things also. Here is what I’ve learned from that discussion and completely agree with this:
- Be passionate about your product
You have to believe that your software or service will make your clients successful. Otherwise, your clients won’t believe it. You’ll hardly sell something that you are not passionate about. - Care about your customers’ success
Remember you are there to help them out. Its not about putting money in your pocket, its about putting money in their pocket. Demonstrate real concern for a positive outcome for the client. - Ask good questions and then shut up
Learn to listen. The more you know, the better you can position your software. People like to talk about themselves. And they like someone who listens to them when they do it. A good listener who is genuinely interested always gets the information and the relationship.
The principles are really simple but very important. Don’t sell products but do offer solutions for clients’ problems.
Our team is passionate about our software help authoring tool, Dr.Explain. That is why we’ve recently created a stunning video that shows how it’s easy to create software documentation with Dr.Explain and how Dr.Explain will save money for your business.
Check it out at http://www.drexplain.com/live_demo/
For the next 5 days (starting on June 8′th), guys from True BoxShot will give away several free licenses a day, as part of “Out of the box” free contest.
Everyone may participate. The contest rules are simple and fun:
- Each morning we’ll post a new cartoon without a caption.
- To win the contest, you must supply the best caption in the comments.
… more details: http://www.trueboxshot.com/out-of-the-box-cartoon-contest
- Daily awards:
- 1′st place: TBS Cover Editor free license
- 2′nd place: True BoxShot or True BoxShot for Photoshop plugin free license on your choice
- 3′d place: 50% discount coupon on any TBS product
- all participant will receive 5% discount coupon on any TBS product
Have fun and win!
And invite your friends and colleagues to take part too!
I’m currently watching an interesting discussion on Business of Software forum.
The topic is about if having your personal photo on your business card is a good idea or not. It’s like everything in business – you don’t know the right answer until you try it yourself. There are cons and pros.
Advantages:
- Breaking standards
- Easier to recall what the discussion was about
- Easier to recall who was that person
- Personal photo causes a feeling of trust and openness
Disadvantages
- Breaking standards
- May look vain
- May look geeky or amateurish
However, most of the discussion participants are inclined to believe that this may be a worthwhile idea. Also, they give other practical advice of effective business card usage. Check it out
BTW, do you know that you may create virtual 3D business cards with TBS Cover Editor like the sample below?
The recent release of Dr.Explain 4, help file authoring and documentation writing software, is a big import step in our company history. So, we needed a new visual identity for the application itself and for the product website to emphasize the great improvements and progress made.
First we decided to begin with a new logotype image design that would become a start point for the rest redesign works. The logo should express the following metaphors associated with our software:
- Intelligence
- Work
- Automation
- Technology
- Simplicity vs. Complexity
- Easiness
- Precision and Accuracy
We tried several “great looking” designers and studios and had failures with them due-to their flat vision and standard template-based approach. They all offered to us combinations of boring circles, paper sheets, lines and meaningless colored shapes.
After we had spent many days and many dollars on such graphical trash, we finally made a discovery – BrandBerry, a small branding and logo design company.
Designers behind the BrendBerry have an out of box attitude, non standard ideas, and simply amazing drawing skills. They had immediately abandoned the idea to use common logo template solutions and offered to invent a character. Now you can see this character on our website and in all promotional materials.
Meet the Dr.Explain. Here it is!
He’s smart, intelligent, industrious, neat, prompt, helpful, and friendly! We love him. Dr.Explain users love him. Everyone loves him!
Are you interested in process of the Dr.Explain character creation? Guys from BrandBerry have recently published a wordless pictured story of the Dr.Explain logo birth.
Check it out! For me, it is a kind of magic!
P.S: If in addition to the logo you need to design photo-realistic box shot images then look at TBS Cover Editor.
There are two common ways to describe a sequence of key pressings in your software help documentation:
The first one is like this
Press Ctrl+Shift+F to flag the record.
The second one is like this
+
+
= Flag the record
If you prefer the second approach then these two resources will be helpful to you:
Clipart: Computer Keyboard keys
Free keyboard fonts at FontSpace
Have a great day ahead!
This post is my short response to a request in Business Of Software forum: “… what’s the best place for us to submit web application?”
Here are some links from our company’s Wiki. Just a list of links, without comments.
- eHub
- KillerStartups – submit via FeedMyApp
- DIY Startup News.com
- Ziipa
- Startup World
- Great Startups
- WebWare
- go2web20
- Ajax Projects
- web2list
- Blippr
- Mashable.com
- I Want To …
- boingboing.net
- carolsvault.com
- Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
- Web Worker Daily
- Digital Trends
I’ve recently discovered a very interesting resource where web entrepreneurs share real experience on how they improved their web site conversions.
ABTests: http://www.abtests.com/
Although currently the number of samples is not great you may find there some interesting ideas for improving your web site’s \ application’s conversion ratio.
You are also welcome to share your own cases to inspire other visitors to share their ones… You know… It’s all about the social interaction and collective intelligence. 
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