Customer Reviews

Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel (Technical Communication, Multimedia, and Information Systems)

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This isn't a comprehensive manual of minimalism, so don't fall into that trap, as a coworker did. It does provide an overview of the principles of minimalism, but I didn't feel qualified as an expert (or even close) after studying it.

That said, I appreciated it because it's a collection of papers rather than the thoughts of one expert, and allowed me to explore differing opinions on some of the points of minimalism. Rather than laying out a formula for writers to follow, I thought it encouraged writers to think about the principles of minimalism and why or why not to adopt certain tenets.

I used this book for a class on User Centered Documentation and it was great. Unfortunately it just became out of print as we started the class, so getting a hold of it was very difficult, but definitely worth it. It is a great reference book for any technical communicator or documentation specialist. It is a collection of essays on user centered documentation design, as well as user analysis. I would be very pleased if they started printing it again!