Portfolio
This is just a brief sample of my work..
Owner's Handbooks
The Owner's Handbooks that I wrote for Mitsubishi Electric PC Division (formerly Apricot Computers) described multimedia PCs, office computers, servers and notebooks. Here are just two examples.
Apricot MS Owner's Handbook (PDF: 2510 Kb)
Pedion Owner's Handbook (PDF: 501 Kb)
(The graphics in these manuals were created by a professional technical illustrator.) More manuals like these are archived on the legacy Mitsubishi Electric Insight CD site. Many of these, but not all, are also my work.
WinHelp help systems
WebHelp help system
This help file was developed for a company called Finmatica (now a part of Infor Global Solutions) for their Collaborate supply chain management product.
Collaborate Help File (WebHelp)
This version is a late draft, so not all topics are complete and some are missing. But enough of the finished help file is present for you to appreciate how it works.
One of the main aspects of the design was to ensure that whenever the user clicks the Help button the information that appears answers both of the following questions about the current page:
- What am I looking at?
- What work can I do here?
Too often, help for web-based applications answers the first question but not the second. The result is application-centric help that merely describes the individual screens, but does little to assist the user with her tasks. The user has to figure out how to use the screen herself. That's why, in this help system, I adopt a more task-centric approach. I repeatedly ask the question "What do you want to do?" and give the user some task choices which lead to procedures for accomplishing them.