by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Everyone knows what Adobe Photoshop is, even people nowhere near the design or art. Thanks to Hollywood stars with their retouched photos, it has become a verb. And while Adobe’s image editing software is a constant preference for designers, there are many arguments why one may want to find other software. That includes the subscription model, frequent crashes if you don’t have enough disc space, the abundance of features when people look for something simpler. Or the reason may be in the fact that you want to support…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
If you’re able to give good advice and teach people how to do things, your video should make sense; otherwise, you’re going to lose authority, trust, and respect.
How to avoid making such fatal mistakes? How to make the perfect instructional video?
Here I’m going to cover some of the most common mistakes people make when creating instructional videos, how to avoid and fix them.
- Using other people’s experiences. One of the great things about video is that it allows you to tell a story about your company…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Technical writers need to adhere to a set of certain rules when it comes to writing their content. Imagine you got a job as a technical writer and your first assignment is to update user manuals of the company. This company doesn’t have any style guide. What shall this writer do? Let’s try to figure this out.
A style guide is a set of standards for writing and designing content; it defines the style that should be used in communication within a particular organization and ensures that your…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
What makes an effective marketing strategy? I’d say content! The messages on your website are the key to the progress of your business goals. This content should make readers want to read it, and it should be created and designed with people’s engagement and wanting to connect in mind. Graphics are what you need for this!
It is a big challenge to transform complicated facts into a simple and accessible piece of information. Graphics help to simplify complex material and make it easily understood. They give a fancy…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
I have an article about using video in technical documentation. Today I’d like to talk about video-publishing platforms.
Video hosting is a platform for uploading and watching videos on the Internet. The most popular service for watching videos online is YouTube. But what can you do if you do not want to use YouTube? Or your customers, for some reason, cannot watch YouTube? The answer is — another video publishing platform. …
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Oh wow, did I have a great vacation! But all things come to an end, and others begin, so I’m here with some great news that I almost missed out being away surfing: the Rainbow release from ClickHelp is here. It is as multifaceted as this beautiful natural phenomenon. There are lots of improvements and new features, like a new dashboard, translation editor, reader UI localization, topic editor updates, and more. You can read about them in this blog post. …
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
The other day I had the “pleasure” to communicate with a chatbot for quizzes. That wasn’t very good. Several times we hit the conversation dead-end. It made me wonder who writes the content for such chatbots and how to make it more efficient and user-friendly. I already wrote about chatbots in technical communication. This time we’ll discuss the content for chatbots.
Bots are a relatively new user interface made to help humans. It’s another type of help desk when you can’t complete a task. Technical writers play a…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
One might think that technical documentation emerged only after the industrial revolution when most technical devices came into existence. But if we look deeper, we see that the drawing is considered one of the earliest process documentation. Or, rather, its varieties that have come down from antiquity. First people used the walls of the caves, the stones to carve the drawings, and even the earth. The birth of construction drawings dates back to when people built a dwelling or storage room for utensils or livestock to survive winters…
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Document formatting is the appearance and visual structure of a document. It’s the mechanics of how the words appear on the page. A well-formatted document should be:
- consistent,
- correct,
- meet stated requirements,
- be reader-friendly.
The visual appeal affects the readers and how they perceive the information, so formatting is essential for any document. …
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Don’t be fooled with the title “writers.” Technical writers frequently present their work using visuals. Cause there are different learning styles they apply and the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words. Information is communicated more easily with visuals.
Visuals help to present complex information (like technical processes) in portions. Abstract concepts also become more definite with a relevant graph or another type of technical illustration.
Product Illustration
Technical drawings are a crucial element of your content, especially when you’rу writing the documents for a company that sells…
Bradley Nice
Content Manager at https://medium.com/level-up-web 👈. I write about web design, web development and technical writing. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook
