You can lead a horse to water…

While working on contract at Apple, one of my co-workers developed a very useful, rich-UI app. that had one quirk:  it required a lot of right-clicking to make things happen quickly (I’ll skip the technical details for this).

Trouble is, Mac users aren’t used to thinking about left and right mouse clicks.

I suspected that this problem was going to occur, so everywhere I could —

• In the documentation
• In the wiki page for the tool
• In the demos ( 3MB QuickTime movie)
• In the instructor-led training materials

— I emphasized the right click:  in italics for writing, and with inflection for the demo voiceover.

Yet, the first week after the launch, we still got some calls about people not being able to figure out how to make the app. work.  Comments were along the lines of “I saw it happen in the demo, but I don’t remember how to do it.”  A gentle direction to the wiki page or yet another reminder to use the right click got users unstuck, but it was both funny and frustrating.

I supposed we should be grateful that so few people got hung up on a major paradigm shift for Mac/Unix users.

Case Study: Early Communication Shortens Design Process

This is a blog about seeking employment as an information-based writer for business.  Simplifying complex concepts, being engaging without obscuring the content — that’s my art form and my passion.

In mid-2008, senior management at PayPal had become alarmed about the rising rate at which customers were getting sent to the company’s general-purpose “abort” page.  The concern was two-fold:

• It implied that the underlying software was getting less robust.
• The page itself was, shall we say, less than helpful.

Management made it a high priority to address both issues, and I was tasked with rewriting the content for the page itself.

Due to the sensitive nature of the page, many eyes — from the product manager, to the editor, to the creative director, and several VPs — were on every word on the new page.  To reduce the number of drafts, I needed to

• Explain the rationale behind my writing in detail at the beginning.
• Use a visually engaging communication method that would capture a busy executive’s attention.

So, I created a PowerPoint presentation (below; expand to full screen to see clearly) to explain my reasoning in very small chunks in the early stages of the project.  This detailed explanation stimulated reviewers’ thinking, too, producing richer feedback.

After a couple of rounds of this, the senior managers were satisfied that the project was on the right track, and later review cycles were shorter, with fewer reviewers.