An eye for design
Everything we touch can benefit from the grace of good design. When I approach a project, I bring with me the design knowledge I've gleaned over the years from masters such as Robert Bringhurst, Jan V. White, Edward Tufte, and Richard Saul Wurman, as well as my own inherent talent.
Online communication
Dreaming. When I joined Google I realized I had an unprecedented opportunity to dream about the the best ways to support software users with learning information, and to actually explore the ideas coming out of those dreams. I'm excited about the possibilities.
Our initial challenge was to create a help ecosystem that can scale to meet the needs of our users world wide. This is an interesting challenge when you consider we're talking about providing help for dozens of products each offered in scores of languages to users numbering in the hundreds of millions or more.
These days my focus is shifting to finding better solutions for the community aspects of help ecosystems, an area I'm very passionate about. I don't know where this will take us, but I do know that the solutions we propose and explore will be large in scale yet rooted in the personal and deeply felt commitment that each of us has to the individuals who use our products.
Sampling of earlier projects
Online Help. In early 2006, I began creating and managing content for the Google SketchUp Help center. My job then evolved into participating in the development of the online help experience for all of Google's consumer products.
Online documentation tool. In the latter part of 2004, I developed an easy-to-use (by writers with little or no Web experience) online tool for creating and distributing structured, Web-based books. By the end of the year, we had used it to publish three user guides and a short reference book, and the tool had met our primary phase 1 objectives:
- The display site provided easy-to-navigate access to books branded for different marketplaces.
- The maintenance tool enabled the sharing of chapters and sections between books (with a goal of reducing translation costs), a method for reviewing draft content not yet published to the display site, and a semi-automated procedure for flattening the books from ASP pages loaded from a database into plain HTML pages in order to facilitate distribution with the application and on a standalone CD.
Community forums. In the early part of 2004, I customized a commercial ASP-based forum for our use as a community and knowledge base tool, and began creating content for it.
Training site. In 2003, I created an ASP-based, SQL database-driven, online training site and wrote trainings for employees and customers. [ Sample online training … ]
Wow! That training is awesome! Just the kind of thing I always wished we had around here. Infrastructure, insurance, knowledge preservation, efficiency, call it what you will, it definitely adds value from the inside out! And even though that class was introductory SQL, I'm not embarrassed to say I learned some things in there.
– Fred Terry, Technical Support
Wild Sage Botanicals. When I designed my first sites I felt like a child who, in taking the first step, awakens to the thrilling possibility of exploring the whole world. www.wildsageskincare.com (live)
A few favorite software tools
Firefox browser. Mozilla. (www.firefox.com)
Coda [Mac]. Panic. One window web development. (www.panic.com/coda)
Gmail and Talk. Google. Web-based email and communication. My team is located in Mountain View, Santa Monica, and Dublin. Video conferencing, email, and instant messaging are my lifelines. (mail.google.com and www.google.com/talk)
Photoshop. Adobe. (www.adobe.com)
SnagIt and Camtasia [PC]. TechSmith. Screen recording and capture. (www.techsmith.com)
Snapz Pro X [Mac]. Ambrosia Software. Record anything on screen. (www.ambrosaisw.com)
TSW WebCoder [PC]. Tanggaard Software. HTML, CSS, and PHP editor. (www.tsware.net)