Color theory: the mystery unveiled

Today I want to share with you a brilliant post covering all the basics that an Information Developer should know about how colors work, brought to you by Dave Gash, a Technical Writer at Google.

In a nutshell, it’s a great read—both fun and educational—that explains how colors work. It’s all there – physics, optics, additive and subtractive color systems, hexadecimal arithmetic (!) and, most importantly, demonstration of how it all works together in real life (I mean, in a real-life CSS).

Believe it or not, CSS color codes really are intuitive. You’ll be surprised to see how obvious it is that “#000000 can’t be anything but black“, and “#ff0000 cannot possibly be anything but bright red“. On top of that, there’s a quiz, real-life CSS examples, and links to useful resources and tools, which all adds immensely to the post’s educational value.

Thanks to the author for gathering all this information and presenting it in such a fun and easy way! That’s rock’n’roll, folks.

View story at Medium.com

Book review: Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Famous designer Yves Saint Laurent once said: “Trends come and go, but style is eternal”. Although the quote is exclusively about fashion, I cannot but extrapolate it to the world of user experience.

Conference crawlers: UA Reloaded 17

Was it worth 2 flights and 2 train rides just to get there? Yes.

Did I feel light-headed from all the modern technologies for content handling? Yes.

Has my brain been reloaded? Many times yes.

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I really am still speechless from all the interesting stuff going on in content world.

What’s even more exciting is that you don’t only listen about it, but can try it yourself. Oh OK, no more spoilers.

Just make sure you book your ticket for the next year! See you there!

Content journey: from technical to marketing and social media

Most technical communicators I know can be divided into 2 types.

There are the ones who love creating general About/Welcome sections in their docs and get off on illustrating workflows, business value, etc.

And then, the ones who need a whole cake and then some to coax themselves into writing overviews and designing diagrams. It’s much easier for this type to write instructions about tangible, down-to-earth, even techy stuff.

My friend Viktoria Bezsmolna is the definitive type 1. Still, this free-spirited girl landed in our InfoDev department. But soon enough, she eloped to marketing. And then to PR. Now, she is a freelance writer and has her own blog – yay!

I finally decided to get to the bottom of how this journey worked out for her.

Our 1,5-hour interview was very thought-provoking, and here’s how it all summed up in my head.

Glossary for Newbie eLearning Developers

My previous article was about choosing the right eLearning authoring tool. But now comes the hardest part—starting to work with it, even if you worked with similar tools before. Here is a short glossary of general and tool-specific terms to help you get eLearning done in leaps and bounds. The tools covered in my glossary include Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Lectora Inspire, and TechSmith Camtasia.

Diagram Series: Pitfalls of interviews with SMEs

Look at the following broken-line graph (Figure #1). How much time do you need to create one? 5 – 10 minutes? How about two days?

Figure #1 (Click to enlarge)

Now, if I provide an estimate of two days for creating a graph, my Customer will expect to receive a 3D visualization, in color. Then, where is the problem? Why creating a graph with a few broken lines might take that much time?

Effectiveness as a habit

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Book Review.

In the last decades, motivation literature has flourished to an unprecedented extent. This is a cultural phenomenon that cannot be missed: people have become interested in self-development, constant improvement, and success. “Ah, yes, success…”— you may sneer skeptically just as I did when I first saw the name of the book. Yet, behind the mainstream title, I found deep thoughts that are applicable in my life journey.