2007 ~ Best Programmers

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

My STC India Annual Conference 2007 Slides

Posted on 23:28 by Unknown

Contingency design does not figure much in conversations amongst technical communicators. In these conversations, the emphasis is usually on the almighty manual. However, oftentimes, customers read error messages before they even think of opening a product's manual. In this presentation, Suman Kumar introduces the key area of contingency design and answers questions like 'How do we design for contingencies?', 'Can you use error messages to boost customer experience and loyalty?', and 'How does effective contingency design help in reducing support costs?'

Find out:
Contingency%20Design.zip (2.28 MB)

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in contigency design, error messages | No comments

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

I will be talking at the STC Annual Conference in Goa

Posted on 01:29 by Unknown

Contingency design does not figure much in conversations amongst technical communicators. In these conversations, the emphasis is usually on the almighty manual. However, oftentimes, customers read error messages before they even think of opening a product's manual. In this presentation, Suman Kumar introduces the key area of contingency design and answers questions like 'How do we design for contingencies?', 'Can you use error messages to boost customer experience and loyalty?', and 'How does effective contingency design help in reducing support costs?'

Read more on the STC Website.

Another interesting paper is by Rachna and Shilpa of Cadence: Test plans as a source of improving documentation quality.

Sweet.

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in conferences, contigency design, stc | No comments

Wednesday, 1 August 2007

Citibank Online Banking: Bad Example

Posted on 03:19 by Unknown

There's a service called RTGS in Citibank. If you have a Suvidha account and you use the online facility, chances are, you must have seen it on your screen. Now, here's an example that borders on stupidity. The Citibank website says:

RTGS transfers allowed only for amounts between Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 2,00,000
Please do not include spaces or characters. For example, Rs.7,800.00 should be entered as 7800.00

Did you say 'So, what's wrong with that example?' Hmm?

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in usability | No comments

Saturday, 23 June 2007

How often...

Posted on 04:00 by Unknown

...have you clicked OK without reading the message?

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in contigency design, error messages | No comments

Saturday, 3 March 2007

Documentation: Google Style

Posted on 03:31 by Unknown

...now, it is not the video or the technology, but it is the informal tone, that will make users use that document. When will corporations understand this?

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in google, ideas | No comments

Monday, 29 January 2007

Adobe to Release PDF for Industry Standardization

Posted on 02:30 by Unknown

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). [Link]

Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com

Posted in standards, tools | No comments

Sunday, 7 January 2007

Adobe PDF flaw: more serious than first thought

Posted on 22:54 by Unknown

A recently discovered security weakness in the widely used Acrobat Reader software could put net users at more risk than previously thought, experts have warned.

Initially, security professionals thought that the problem was restricted and exposed only web-related data or could support phishing scams. Now it has been discovered that miscreants could exploit the problem to access all information on a victim's hard drive, said web security specialists at SPI Dynamics and WhiteHat Security. [read more]