Guidance News

Building Help for Web Applications and Ecommerce Sites

"Aiding and Abetting Your Users - Building Help for Web Applications and Ecommerce Sites," is a new article by Guidance President Jack Massa, recently published by Atlanta's TechLinks Community Publishing.

Summary: While intuitive design and usability practices make it possible for many users to "figure out" an interface, there are always users who need assistance. Good Help reduces the ongoing costs of customer service and support, and ensures more productive and satisfied customers. This article provides a blueprint for designing, building, and iteratively improving Help for applications and websites.

Read it online (external link) PDF version

Do-It-Yourself Usability

Guidance presents: The Usability Audit, a Do-It-Yourself Approach to Improving Usability
When and Where: March 10, 2007 at the STC Atlanta Currents Conference, Mercer University, Atlanta.

In this session, Guidance President Jack Massa describes an inspection methodology for improving the usability of applications and web sites.

The Usability Audit is a low-cost, low-resource technique that can be used by various team members—technical communicators, product managers, QA analysts or developers—and can be adapted to any phase of the development cycle. The session includes a case study in which a Usability Audit was designed and conducted for a suite of web applications.

Read the Conference Paper Get the Session Handout

Guidance Teaches Successful Business Writing

In today's professional environment, everyone must write effective emails and letters. Managers and engineers are often responsible for formal documents—such as specifications, reports and proposals. Yet the writing produced by many organizations is unclear and ineffective, resulting in confusion, lost productivity and lost revenue.

Now, Guidance Communications is pleased to offer workshops and coaching programs for successful business writing. We do not offer one-size-fits-all seminars. Instead, we analyze our clients' writing needs, meet with their people, and devise a custom program to make their writing successful. Guidance President Jack Massa has taught writing course in college and industry and has years or experience working with writers at every skill level.

To learn how to improve the writing in your organization, please see our Services page on Business Writing Instruction.

Thoth's Tips

Communication Lessons from the God of Scribes

In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the God of Scribes and the Scribe of the Gods. He was also a god of wisdom and of all things intellectual. If Thoth were around today, he might offer suggestions like these for communicating in the workplace.

Tip #1 - Emails That Get Results