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First Day of the Week: Sunday or Monday?

Published by in Engineering, Human Factors, Usabiliity on January 24th, 2012

I am sure you have wondered about this. Is Sunday or Monday the first day of the week? If you haven’t, then you haven’t bought a calender in Canada and sent it as a gift to someone in Germany. Coming from Canada, the calendar week always started on Sunday. Now, living Germany, I have to get used to writing my calendar notes not on Tuesday when I meant to write it on Monday! Confusing? It is for me. Sometime back in 2001 when I first moved to Berlin, I walked into my doctor’s office expecting to see my doctor. The

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User Friendly Housing – the Quonset Hut

Published by in Human Factors, Usabiliity on January 5th, 2012

Perhaps you have heard of the famous Quonset Hut? It is a lightweight structure made of half-tube corrugated iron sheeting fixed together, supported by lightweight braces and attached to a concrete base. According to Wikipedia, these structures were developed by the US Navy as “an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor”. They are a brilliant example of user-friendliness, at least in terms of assembly. Soldiers and sailors could with minimum tools setup these simple structures. Sounds like an IKEA Billy shelf unit. They were very user-friendly. This is the Royal Canadian Air Force

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Kindle 3G and 4G – Reviewed by EEVBlog

Published by in Human Factors, Usabiliity on January 2nd, 2012

I just received a Kindle 3G for Christmas. The jury is still out whether I like it or not. But this little video is helping me make up my mind. EEVBlog produced a great review of the Kindle 3G and the 4th generation Kindle. But as I use a Blackberry, I like devices with a QWERTY Keyboard. So – I guess my verdict is, for now, the 3rd Generation Kindle with Keyboard is suits my current needs. You can view this video and more at http://www.eevblog.com/

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Earth as seen from Mars

Published by in Human Factors, Usabiliity on October 7th, 2011

Have you ever wondered what Martian scientists would discover if they came to planet earth. Take a look at this film from the National Film Board of Canada called “What on Earth!”. It shows an interesting perspective on planet Earth. It also shows that engineers and users may not have the same perception of what a product is about. In this film, Martian scientists thought the inhabitants of planet earth were automobiles while the drivers were parasites. We, of course, know better.

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Content and Layout = Information: Lessons from Apple

Published by in History of Technical Writing, Human Factors, Usabiliity on August 27th, 2011

Technical Writing is a profession that divides content and layout into two separate, but equal tasks. Content is the facts, details, images, procedures, and so forth. Layout is how this material is delivered to the intended audience. Together content and layout is information. It acknowledges the facts people need to know, but how it is delivered to the intended audience turns these facts into information. Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message”. How the content is delivered IS as much the information as the content that is delivered to the intended audience. Apple, the company, not

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Dangers of Automatic Updates

Published by in Human Factors, Technical Writing, Usabiliity on August 7th, 2011

Recently, I spent 2 days rebuilding a database that was destroyed by an automatic update. It all started so innocently. I right-clicked on a file to open it in said application (which will remain unnamed, except it manages e.V.s and is in German and can be bought at most media stores here in Germany). Now, one would think this action would be normal on any Windows system. It would have been except that the said software wanted to do an automatic update BEFORE it would open this file. Doing things in the correct Order As the software was in a

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Keeping the Human Factor in Government Communications

Published by in Human Factors, Usabiliity on January 14th, 2011

Apparently, the German Government has realized very few people can actually read the stuff they send out to citizens. This does not surprise me really, as the notion of human factors and technical writing is so new here that the government has not benefited in the past from the input our profession can offer to their documentation. When I first arrived here in 2001, the German Employment Agency had never heard of a Technical Writer (Technische Redakteur in German). Even today, I find it difficult explaining exactly what I do to Government Beamte (employees or officials). The best I could

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