I was at the UMO: Bad Design Expo’08 held recently on the occasion of ‘World Usability Day’. The expo was on badly designed products. The aim was to highlight ill designed products that we use in our daily lives. They were not software products but simple products like leaky pens, sandals with heels and so on. Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can use a particular tool or product.
According to usability philosophy, if a user has problem using a product then it is not the user’s lack of knowledge of the product but the product itself is badly designed.After going to the expo my perspective on things has changed. I look at objects that I use every day in a new light. I actually went to the expo to look at the cartoons. The theme for cartoons was global warming. Some of them were witty and creative. But these thought provoking presentations on usability were a bonus.
I strongly believe that students are not aware of Usability. There are so many students out there who are very creative but are not aware of this field. When people talk about jobs in the software industry, they usually think of software development or testing. Many do not know about usability or for that matter technical writing too. I wish there was a way to provide proper career guidance to students across towns and villages in India.
0
comments
Posted in
Labels:
Writing
The purpose of having a Release note is to provide the necessary information when a software product is released. Release notes are distributed with the software product. Release notes contain new features, bug fixes, workarounds, known issues, and so on, since the release of the previous version of the product. Release notes are distributed with the product during its beta release and contain the product’s features. The subsequent versions of the product are delivered with release notes containing information on bugs that are fixed or enhancements made on the product including new features.
Some companies may maintain two kinds of release notes:
- Internal release notes maintained for the company’s own use.
- Public release notes delivered to customers and end users.
Release notes provide high-level information on the new features or modifications as part of the new release. It must be very brief. Bug fixes are added to the release notes once a bug is fixed. There is a school of thought that insists that the problem summary be stated for a bug fix. There are some others who say that the solution of the bug must be included under bug fixes. Some companies also publish the test results and information about the test procedure to boost customer confidence. Bug fixes are not included only if the problem is not customer facing and is very minor to publish. Known issues or open issues in the product are also a part of the release notes. If there is a work around to the known issue then the work around is also part of release notes. Features that are no longer part of the product are also included in release notes. If the installation of the product is very straight forward then it can be part of release notes else it can be a separate document.
Tone:
Like any other documentation, the content must be clear and concise. It must be written in the present tense.
Medium:
Release notes can be shipped to the customer in PDF or htm formats. The medium is decided depending on the customer’s convenience.
The table of contents of release notes may be as follows:
- Introduction (product name, version, release date and product information in brief)
- System Requirements (Software and hardware requirements of the product)
- New Features
- Dropped Features
- Fixed IssuesKnown Issues, Limitations and Restrictions
- Installation guide (product installation procedure)
- Troubleshooting
- FAQ
- Disclaimers (Company and standard product related messages)
- Related Documentation (About product documentation)
- Contact (Support contact information)
Sources – STC, Klariti.com and many other sources, in short Google.com.
