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User Assistance: HUDs in Technical Communication

by Tony Self  

 

Did you ever see the 1986 movie "Top Gun?" If so, perhaps you recall seeing gun-sights, cross-hairs, warning messages, and air speeds displayed as green text on the cockpit windshield of the jets. What you saw in the movie was an early Head Up Display (HUD). If Top Gun is too old for you, how about Iron Man? HUD was featured prominently in that movie as well.

While HUDs may seem like something you'll find only in fighter jets or the movies, they are actually creeping into everyday life. For instance, HUDs are now installed as standard equipment in many cars displaying speed, distance, and messages onto the windshield. Drivers don't need to move their head up or down to read the text; they can keep looking straight ahead.

If your car isn't equipped with a HUD, you can use your smart phone, download a HUD app, place the phone on the dashboard, and reflect an inverted readout onto the windshield. And you can purchase HUD navigation systems (such as the unit shown below from Garmin).

   

There's a new type of HUD that's attracting lots of attention: Google Glass. Glass isn't the only product of its type on the market (there are dozens), but it attracts the most publicity. These wearable technology products display text in a tiny HUD in a pair of lens-less spectacles. The text displayed depends on the application; it could be the current time, an appointment, alerts... but it could also be procedural information, checklists, or product descriptions.

What does HUD technology have to do with technical communication? HUDs will provide innovative new ways to deliver technical information. For instance, Virgin Atlantic is currently testing Google Glass at Heathrow Airport. According to CNN, "The airline is conducting a six-week experiment with the wearable technology for passengers in its Upper Class Lounge at London. With data flashing before their eyes, staff can update customers on their latest flight information, as well as weather and events at their destination."

 Source: CNN

If the Virgin Atlantic tests prove successful, the opportunities for technical communicators are endless. Beyond simply documenting HUD devices and applications, technical documentation and eLearning content could actually be displayed on a HUD. There will be challenges of course. Writers looking to create content for HUDs will need to embrace writing techniques such as minimalism and separation of content and form. Nevertheless, it will be possible for technical communicators to one day deliver to this new media... a layer above reality. 

MobiLogic: Wanna Read Faster? Try These Apps

by AJ Walther

Have you downloaded iOS7? Do you find reading text-heavy articles on your phone or iDevice to be labor intensive, boring, and/or time consuming? Then you may want to try the new iOS7 app, Velocity. The makers of Velocity claim their app can increase your reading speed from 200 words per minute to 1000 by using the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation technique. You can choose how quickly you'd like to read, but the default is 300 words per minute, which Velocity creators cite as being 50% more words than the average reader can normally take in. Another useful feature of the app calculates how long it will take you to read an article. Velocity isn't the only speed-reading tool on the market using this same technique, however.

Web-Based Apps

Back in September of 2011, I wrote about a web-based speed-reading program called Zap Reader that performs much the same function as Velocity. Zap Reader includes options to adjust the words per minute, number of words shown at a time, font, font size, alignment, and font color. Another web-based option is Spreeder, which performs more or less the same task as Zap Reader but without the option to change the font and with the addition of window height and width controls.

But that's not all...

Other Speed-Reading Apps for iOS

Two other options for iOS are Fastr and ReadQuick. Fastr is a speed-reading app similar to all of the aforementioned options, but it has additional features allowing you to highlight and annotate parts of text, save them, and share them with others via social media. In addition to being accessible on iPhones, iPads, and iPods, it can also be accessed from a desktop computer. ReadQuick is very similar but with Instapaper integration and without annotation tools.

And One for Android

FastReader is available in the Google Play store. It lets you read an article in any browser by sharing its link with FastReader. Text can be copied into the app with the Clipboard function. You can also use the File Explorer to read eBooks (including TXT, ePub files and soon PDF files).

And Even One for Windows Phone

Point Reader developers claim that their app can help people read 33% faster on average and even faster than that with practice. The app syncs with your SkyDrive library for ePub consumption. And, like Velocity, Point Reader calculates how long it will take you to read each chapter or book. The app does not currently work for RSS feeds or articles.