How to write a how to

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How ToHow to write a How-To

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My book

By Erin Malone and Christian Crumlish http://www.oreilly.com/pub/get/DWS

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OverviewOverview Step by Step Process Writing Exercise Share

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How to’s?Tutorials How-tos Instructional Design Recipes Walkthroughs Interface copy

Step-by-steps Tours Patterns Anti-Patterns Onboarding Help

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Overview

Tips: • Write about something you know well. • Make the thing yourself.

Do the process yourself and document as you go. • Use the process to better solidify a process for yourself.

You know it well if you can explain it to someone else clearly. • Show, do, show, do

A How-to is essentially a recipe - for whatever - for cooking, for writing, for teaching, for coding, for making

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1.Who is it for?

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2. Give overview

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3. What tools?

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4. List out the steps

Permanent link to this comic: http://www.dearfuture.com/190/ (this image has been modified to fit horizontally)

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5. Drill down to sub-steps

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5. & flesh out the smaller tasks

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6. Show alternative steps

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7. Tips

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8. Pictures worth 1000 words

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9. Summarize and Reinforce

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10. Related & more

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Summary1. Define audience 2. Give overview 3. List tools 4. Detail steps 5. and substeps 6. and any alternative steps 7. Tips 8. Pictures 9. Final Summary 10.References

How to cook pasta - by Christina Wodtke

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Let’s Writeexercise

Permanent link to this comic: http://xkcd.com/1029/

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Group Exercise

How to boil an egg

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Group Exercise

How to create a sitemap

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Exercise1. Select something you know well 2. Write / Act out 3. Swap with partner 4. Critique / Ask questions 5. Iterate

Share

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Thanksemail: erin@tangible-ux.com (or) erin@emdezine.com twitter: @emalone linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/erinkmalone