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            SEMINARS IN USABLE DESIGN

TITLE:      Downsizing Your Documentation 
DATE:       Monday and Tuesday, Oct 3-4, 1994 
TIME:       8:30 - 4:30 
AUDIENCE:   Managers, technical writers, communicators, marketing
            folks,engineers. 

You've heard about minimalist documentation, but is it appropriate for
your situation and how do you produce it? Downsizing your online and
printed documentation can increase user satisfaction while lowering the
costs of production, maintenance, and distribution. In this workshop,
you will learn how to design lean documentation and scale down your
existing documentation so that you can increase its usefulness without
compromising its completeness. Many seminar graduates have reduced
document size by 50-75%.

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UNIQUE BENEFITS
You will learn how to: 
*Make documents better by making them briefer.
*Create lean documents with little or no repetition. 
*Shrink existing documents by editing, cutting, and restructuring them. 
*Use images to replace text.
*Decide when and how to replace "how it works" with "how to work it."
*Accurately target information to your audience.
*Eliminate documentation by building information into the product. 
*Make suggestions that get listened to for improving the design of the
 product. 
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TOPICS TO BE COVERED 

WHY DOCUMENT ANYTHING? 
Why people don't use manuals. Better=smaller. Delivering information via
the product. Delivering information as a service. Zero-based
documentation. 

AIMING FOR USABILITY, NOT COMPREHENSIVENESS 
Letting the product explain itself. Quick reference cards as model
documents. Avoiding the information treasure hunt. Cutting obstructive
overviews. Minimizing passive reading. Replacing overwhelming detail
with hints. Replacing text with art. Turning text into callouts. Cutting
redundant illustrations.

GETTING LEARNERS INVOLVED
Brief procedures for basic tasks. Turning narratives into compact,
effective instructions. Making documents tool, not containers of
informtion. Encouraging exploration. Attuning learners to feedback from
the system.

DECIDING WHAT INFORMATION IS RELEVANT TO USERS
Focusing on meaning and competence. How much information do people want?
What kind? Choosing the appropriate type of information. How it
works?-or-How to work it? 

TAKING A DIAGNOSTIC STANCE TO RECOGNIZE ERRORS
Reducing documentation by anticipating user mistakes. 5 basic types of
mistake. Eliminating common sources of error. Intructing users in error
recognition and recovery.
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SPECIAL FEATURES
*Case studies, demonstrations, and exercises that clarify downsizing
 problems and illustrate solutions to them. 
*An extensive workbook, profusely illustrated with good and bad
 examples, step-by-step before and afters. 
*An in-class peer review of your own work to uncover opportunities to
 begin downsizing the moment you get back to your desk. Please bring a
 sample of a past work, work-in-progress, or planned work.
_____________________________________________________ 
INSTRUCTOR Henry
Korman, RA. Henry is a partner in WordPlay Communications, focusing on
making technology accessible to everyone. WordPlay has collaborated with
clients such as Apple, Claris, Hewlett-Packard, Lotus, Stentor,
Teknekron, and Xerox-most recently, helping large and small
businesses to improve their documentation while making cuts of up to
75%. His latest book, with Jonathan Price, is "How to Communicate
Technical Information," published by Benjamin Cummings.
_____________________________________________________ 
COST $585--Fees
include all seminar materials, lunch, and refreshments. Full payment is
required prior to the seminar to confirm class space. 

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CONTACT 
Seminars in Usable Design 
710 Kipling Street, Suite 400 
Denver, CO 80215 
(303) 234-0123 
Fax: (303) 232-0659