The Logical Blog by IconLogic

eLearning and Design: Another Typography Game and Perhaps Some Inspiration

by AJ Walther

Tantalized by typography? Gaga for good design? Head over heels for history? Gung-ho for a bit of gamification in your free time? Then you must try Type:Rider, available for iOS and Android. Right off the bat I'll tell you it isn't a free app, but the educational value as well as the simple and visually stunning design will make it worth the $3 (or $3.64 for Android--sorry folks!).

The game starts with a six-step tutorial level where you travel through a world of cave paintings (aka the origin of typography) as the gallant [horizontal] colon; rolling, jumping, dodging, and moving objects in your pursuit of collecting typographic symbols and unlocking content for further reading.

In this first tutorial level, the content is cave painting, cuneiform writing, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters, the Greek alphabet, and the Latin alphabet.

To advance to the next level, you must find a third "dot" and move it along with your colon character into three designated slots, forming an ellipsis.

The "Origins" tutorial moves on to the Gothic era, where game play takes place in a land of cathedral ruins consisting of books, ink bottles, and misplaced type.

The content you're working to unlock is visually appealing, relevant, and interesting. But if you find yourself caught up in game play, you can always skip the reading and circle back to it after you've finished the level.

To date, I have only gotten as far as the Gothic level. Eight additional levels adorned with mysterious question marks still await me (each decorated in the style of the times so I could probably guess what each has in store).

Aside from the obvious fun and visual interest I've found in this game (that I think fellow designers will find as well), I've also found inspiration for future eLearning courses. Thoughts of creating a game-based course for the medical field with a scalpel as the main character, cutting through to each new level, dance in my head. Or maybe a hard hat in the construction industry-protecting the head of a new character for each level. Have I gotten your creative juices flowing too? Don't be shy (or greedy)--share those ideas with your ol' pal AJ by posting comments below!

And if you've gotten past the Gothic level in Type:Rider, don't give me any spoilers. ;)

Adobe Captivate 7.01: Twice the Locking Power

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe recently announced a patch for Adobe Captivate 7. The patch offers support for the new Macintosh and Windows operating systems and fixes several bugs. As patches go, bug fixes and expanded support for operating systems is typical fare. However, if you've spent the few minutes that it takes to install the free upgrade, you might have missed some enhancements that are a pleasant surprise (and above and beyond what one might expect to find in a simple patch).

For instance, the ability to lock slide objects has been around for years. All you needed to do was select a slide object and, on the Timeline, click the white dot in the lock column. In the image below, I've added a Text Caption to a slide. The white dot indicates that the object is not locked. I can drag the unlocked object around the slide, resize it, and use any of the groups on the Properties panel.

Prior to the patch for Captivate 7, clicking the white dot simply locked the object and the white dot changed into a lock icon (shown in the image below). While locked, you couldn't move or resize the object nor change any of the object's Properties without first unlocking the object.

After installing the Captivate 7.01 patch, there are now two lock modes: fully locked and semi-locked. After an initial click on the white dot, the lock icon is noticeably different from what was seen in older versions of Captivate. In the image below, notice that instead of the standard lock icon that was shown in the image above, the lock icon now includes arrows.

The arrows not only appear on the lock icon on the Timeline; the locked object on the slide also displays the semi-locked icon (shown below).

When an object is semi-locked, you cannot change its size or slide position. However, you can make other changes to the object. For instance, in the image below, notice that while the Transform group options aren't available, the options in the General group (Caption and Callout) are both available. In addition to the General group, all of the remaining groups remain available with a semi-locked object.

If you'd like to fully lock an object (just like in the old days), it's a simple matter of clicking the white dot on the Timeline a second time (the first click semi-locks the object; a second click fully locks the object).

If you'd like to see a demonstration of how the new lock feature works in Adobe Captivate 7.01, check out this video on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

Technical Communications: Writer Challenges in Agile and Traditional Development Teams, Part II

by Alyssa Fox

Last week I introduced you to agile, an increasingly popular development method primarily used by software companies. This week I'm going to cover how agile helps you get more thorough and timely reviews of your documentation from the team.

Getting Helpful Documentation Reviews

Whether you are in a traditional or agile development environment, getting valuable, informative edits on documentation you send out for review can be like pulling teeth. Some reviewers give the documentation a cursory glance and declare it "okay" with no helpful comments. Others fail to follow the steps as listed in the documentation when testing procedures and have no way to ensure the writer captured everything accurately.

When the Information Development team in my organization used the waterfall process, we used a review cycle that included three drafts of each book: a first draft, an approval draft, and a quality edit draft. The first draft and quality edit draft were internal to our Information Development (ID) department. All of these drafts happened toward the end of a software release cycle and were not reviewed by anyone outside the ID team until the project was feature complete and all features were documented in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, the time when we sent out our approval draft for review by other functional areas often coincided with their busiest times of the release cycle--testing the product and fixing bugs. Because of this poor timing for the documentation review, we often got only superficial edits, or no comments at all, which didn't help us improve the documentation quality.

In agile development, we now write documentation for a feature in the sprint (time-limited development cycle) in which it is developed and tested. For additional information about agile concepts, see Fiona Hanington's article, Can I Be an Agile Technical Communicator When My Team Is Not?.

On more mature products, we no longer send out the entire book as a first draft for ID review. Each time a feature is documented, that documentation must be reviewed by the ID lead/manager and by QE for technical accuracy before the team can close the user story. This idea is similar to a daily in filmmaking--use it to do a quick gut check to see if everything looks okay or if something needs to be redone. We still send out approval drafts for some projects; but for most reviewers, at that point it is simply a director's cut or a chance for them to see the book in its entirety.

Next time, we'll wrap up with how agile helps spread writers' workloads throughout the release cycle.

Note: This article was originally published earlier this year on the TechWhirl website.

Create ePubs Using Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp

I recently presented a 60-minute webinar for Adobe where I demonstrated how to use the Adobe Technical Communication Suite and take Adobe FrameMaker content to Adobe RoboHelp to ePub in mere minutes.

If you missed the live webinar, you'll be happy to learn that the session was recorded and you can view it for free.

More information.

Writing & Grammar: "There is" Versus "There are" and "A Number Of"

by Jennie Ruby

Starting your sentence with one of these "false subjects" may not always be the best choice (as I discussed last time in my article Talk About People), but when you do start a sentence with the word there, you'll want to use correct verb agreement.

Consider this sentence I found on the Internet (yes, identity masked to protect the innocent):

While there is a large number of Content Management Systems (CMS) to choose from, few CMS platforms are more popular and more widely used than [system A and system B].

To fix the grammar of this sentence, we'll have to use two different concepts. The first is how to identify the true subject for which the false subject is a stand-in. The second is deciding whether to use a plural or singular verb with the expression a number of.

When you start a sentence with there, the true subject will be after the verb, like this:

There is one cat under the couch.

The true subject is one cat. If we removed the word there, we would use one cat as the subject of the sentence:

One cat is under the couch.

Compare that sentence with this one:

There are two cats under the couch.

Here are some more examples:

There are four good reasons to use System A.

There is only one way to delete the system file.

Now let's add a more complicated true subject:

There is none of this confusion when you start by learning the basics.

There are plenty of reasons for using system B, also.

Finally, let's look at the phrase a number of. The Gregg Reference Manual, an excellent grammar reference book, tells us that the phrase a number of is plural. In contrast, the number of is singular.

So in our original sentence from the Internet, the true subject,a large number of Content Management Systems is plural. The corrected sentence would read:

While there are a large number of Content Management Systems (CMS) to choose from, few CMS platforms are more popular and more widely used than [system A and system B].

I'll save a discussion of not defining an acronym in the plural for another day.

Challenge

Choose the correct verb agreement in these sentences starting with there.

1. There is/are two dialog boxes and three messages yet to get through.
2. There is/are some plants on the balcony that need to be brought in before the frost.
3. There has to be/have to be compelling reasons for omitting the planning stage.
4. There has been/have been such a ruckus about the new upgrade schedule that some developers have turned elsewhere.
5. There was/were a number of professional trainers involved in the program's development.

Feel free to send your post your answers below as comments.

Adobe RoboHelp: Using Images in Variables

by Willam Van Weelden

Variable sets, which I've written about previously, allow you to define groups of definitions for a variable which allows you to easily support differently branded products from a single RoboHelp project. This week I want to show you another cool variables feature: images.

You can easily reuse images in multiple RoboHelp topics. Since the images that appear in the topics are linked externally to the original image, when you edit the original image, all of the RoboHelp topics are updated automatically. One drawback to this global update is that it only works if you use the same image in all of the generated layouts.

You can make your life even easier by adding images to variables. Take a logo for example. Many customers require that their software is personalized. For example, the application must use the client's brand colors and logo. By adding a logo to a variable and using variable sets, you can easily change the branding used in your Help content.

Add an Image to a Variable

1. Open the User Defined Variables pod. (View > Pods > User Defined Variables).
2. Select a variable (in the image below, I've selected a variable that I created called Logo).
   
3. Choose Insert > Image.
4. Select an image and then click OK.
   

The image is added to the variable. At this point, you can use the variable within any topic, just like a typical variable.

See also: Working with variables and adding variables to topic titles.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

Adobe RoboHelp: Variable Sets

by Willam Van Weelden

I've previously shown you how to use variables in topic titles. As discussed in that article, variables allow you to quickly update text throughout a project. For example, variables are particularly handy should your boss decide to rebrand the project two days before your deadline.

RoboHelp also supports variable sets, which are alternative definitions for your variables. For example: a company markets the same product in different sectors, private and public. In the private sector, the product is called ACME; in the public sector the product is called EMCA. It's the same product, just a few naming differences. You use the same help output for both sectors. Before you publish, you just need to set the product name correctly using variables.

Using variable sets, you first define a single set of variables. Then you create alternative definitions for only those variables that need to be changed. When you generate the output, you simply choose which variable sets to use, allowing you to set the alternative product name a single time.

Creating a Variable Set

1. Open the User Defined Variables pod. (View > Pods > User Defined Variables)
2. Click the Add/Edit/Delete Variable Set button.
   
3. Click the Add button and name the variable set.
   
4. Click the OK button to close the dialog box.
5. Select the variable set from the drop-down menu and change the values as needed.
   

Generating a Layout With a Variable Set

Prior to generating the layout, you simply need to choose the variable set from the Variable Set drop-down menu. (For WebHelp, the Variable Set drop-down menu can be found in the Content Categories area.)

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once each month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

Adobe Announces Patch for Adobe Captivate 7

Adobe has just released a patch for Adobe Captivate 7. The patch supports both Mac OS 10.9 and Windows 8.1, and addresses several known bugs. In addition, there are several enhancements including:

• STAR smart shape added
• Color Swatches: You can now import swatches from Adobe Photoshop and Kuler, or create custom swatches, and apply them to Adobe Captivate objects with a single click.
• Copy/Paste of objects/Slides carries actions, Advanced Actions and Shared Actions across the projects.
• Open external library containing shared Actions and drag and drop them in current project and reuse 
• Conditional Actions:
  • Duplicate conditional block for reuse 
  • Preview the entire conditional action
  • Move/Re-Order conditional decision block
• New Actions in Advanced Actions Dialog box – Pause / Exit / Increment / Decrement
• New Actions in AA and PI – Lock / Unlock TOC , Show / Hide Toc, Toggle, Show/Hide Playbar
• New Variables added:
  • CpInReviewMode - Indicates whether the user is in Review mode or not.
  • CpQuizInfoPreTestMaxScore - Returns the maximum score for the pretest questions.
  • CpQuizInfoPreTestTotalCorrectAnswers - Returns the number of correctly answered pretest questions.
  • CpQuizInfoPreTestTotalQuestions - Returns the number of pretest questions in the project.
• Support for Print and Save in Notes Interaction
• New Millionaire interaction
• Reporting of variable usage
• Support for locking Size and Position of objects
• Support for flipping smart shapes through Properties Panel
• Support for deleting unused (cached) Image buttons and Captions

You can learn more on the Adobe site.

Technical Communications: Writer Challenges in Agile and Traditional Development Teams

by Alyssa Fox

Technical communicators have historically faced several challenges when working on development teams. From not receiving the information needed to do their jobs, to ensuring their work estimates are included in the overall team's estimates, to showing their value to stakeholders, writers on project teams can feel like they are facing an uphill battle to create good documentation. A number of factors can influence how these challenges manifest during product development, including organizational culture and various business needs, and the agile development approach can help.

Agile is an increasingly popular development method primarily used by software companies. Its iterative nature and focus on the self-directed team support writers in recognizing and learning to rise to the challenges common to most development teams.

This three-part series discusses those challenges, and shows why agile can be the better approach for technical communicators.

Being an Equal Part of the Team

Most technical writers with more than a few years' experience under their belts can empathize with the struggle to be included as an equal member of the project team. The business case for this model is simple and common sense: Being treated as a vital part of the team leads to increased communication with other team members, inclusion in essential meetings, and improved product knowledge-all of which contribute to better, more effective documentation and user support.

Regardless of the type of development environment you are in, to be an equal player, the onus is on you. Take the initiative: speak up in meetings, request invitations to those meetings, and offer feedback. In other words, get involved in all aspects of the product development. This level of involvement tunes you into the project from the beginning, with obvious benefits: knowing the requirements, design, and thought process behind the design of the software. Ask lots of questions--lots and lots of questions--but make them count. If you hear something in a design meeting that doesn't make sense to you, or you think there's a better approach, say so. Don't be intimidated by the fact that you're not a developer--chances are the product manager and the marketing team know less about code than you do.

Remember, it's the technical communicator's job to look at the product from the user perspective. If you find a user interface is difficult or confusing, so will users. You have an obligation to provide that feedback to the developer who's coding it.

To be an equal partner on the engineering team, you must own the work with the same level of commitment as developers, analysts, or testers. Claim ownership of the technical accuracy of the documentation you write. Don't write just what the developers tell you to write or assume something works a certain way. Work with the builds, ask questions, and gain your own understanding of how the product works. That means speaking up to get access and then maintaining whatever virtual machines or environments you need so you can quickly and easily access the product. If you demonstrate a solid understanding of the product, the team trusts you more when you point out a technical or usability problem and make a suggestion for change.

Agile development focuses heavily on communication. The feature requirements, use cases, and test plans of a waterfall environment translate to user stories, acceptance criteria, and acceptance tests in an agile world. An agile process uses significantly less project documentation, with the idea that the communication going on among the team members is enhanced through several different types of meetings. While the number of meetings might seem overwhelming at first, it quickly becomes apparent how crucial they are for open discussion about the user stories and planning items the team is working on. Become more visible by participating in these meetings and you'll gain both the trust of your team members and more product knowledge. That product knowledge directly feeds in to you producing higher-quality content that provides information that users really want.

Next time, we'll discuss how agile helps you get more thorough and timely reviews of your documentation from the team.

Note: This article was originally published earlier this year on the TechWhirl site.

Localization: Training & Development in Belgium

by Jen Weaver  

Did you know that Belgium is the European country with the most complex language legislation? But what does complex language legislation mean, and how does it impact training and development? 

Belgium is comprised of four linguistic regions but only has three national languages (the Brussels-Capital region is bilingual). Legislation exists to protect individuals in the linguistic minority in each region--laws that may mandate the translation of your training materials, handbooks, and eLearning lessons. 

Test your Knowledge of Belgian Culture:

1. True or False? While English is the language of choice for politicians, it's not one of Belgium's official languages.
2. Belgium is a:
1. Democratic Union
2. Republic
3. Kingdom
3. True or False? Given the diversity of the Belgian population, very little ethnic bias is evident in their culture.

Quick Tips for Training & Development in Belgium¹:

• When seeking to do business in Europe, Belgium is a frequent test market as they provide an accurate representation of the age, income, and education of the average European Union Member. They also represent a smaller audience to test receptivity to your product and message.
• Most Belgians are Roman Catholic. Religious ideals and absolutes play into everyday decision making.
• Belgians are highly risk-adverse. Some attribute this to German invasions in the country's history. This lends to rigidity, a high value of structure and stability, and an emphasis on mutual trust. Keep this in mind when crafting your training materials and build rapport early on through consistency and a clearly communicated plan.
• Month-long vacations are common and may interrupt ongoing training classes or meetings.
• Use high-end graphics in your handbooks and presentations as Belgians appreciate visual examples.
• As there are three distinct linguistic groups in Belgium, be mindful of your audience and their unique customs. If you're unsure of what language is best to use, speak English and never discuss a preference towards French, German, or Dutch in particular. Language plays a large role in establishing relationships, so take care to determine if you can meet the linguistic needs of the entire population.
• There are several American gestures or postures that hold different meanings in Belgium:
  • Standing with your hands in your pockets is offensive.
  • The okay sign means zero.
  • Pointing with your index finger is rude so be sure to gesture with your full hand.

Knowledge Answers from Above:

1. True. Belgium's official languages are French, Dutch, and German and the prevailing language will differ per region. While English is widely used, it is not one of the official languages.
2. Belgium is a Kingdom, a constitutional monarchy where the King is Chief of State.
3. False. Class distinctions are prevalent and many individuals still hold ethnic bias.

References:

¹Morrison, Terri, and Wayne A. Conaway, Kiss, Bow, Or Shake Hands, 2nd ed. (Avon: Adams Media, 2006).

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Developing training & development materials for in-country use? Contact Jen at Carmazzi Global Solutions.