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Minimalism favors short, task-oriented content over long, narrative material. Often based upon minimalist theory, the 'Plain language' movement seeks to present information in a way that makes it as easy as possible for people to understand, most often by removing unnecessary complexity and specialized terminology from documents.
#29734
Achieving Minimalism through Interactive Multimedia 
Use interactive multimedia with text-based online documentation to achieve the minimalist model pioneered by instructional design guru John Carroll. Non-linear modules of 'real' tasks help users get started fast, and quickly learn from any errors.
De Yoreo, Dave and Ben Kauffman. STC Proceedings (2004). Design>Multimedia>Interaction Design>Minimalism
#25126
Adopting Minimalism in a Corporate Environment 
Minimalism is more a methodology or set of principles than a set of measurable qualities. In order for your writers to move to a minimalist approach to documentation, you must be able to explain what you mean by the term and what you expect from your writers.
Swallow, Lisa and Matt Laney. STC Region 7 Proceedings (2002). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism
#30200
Advocating Plain Language: Thom Haller Discusses The Need For Clarity
Plain language is clear, concise, and straightforward presentation of information. It is professional content structured to eliminate ambiguity and confusion in technical, government, and legal documents. Plain language allows readers to fully comprehend complex regulations, practices and instructions by requiring the language of bureaucracy to reflect the language of everyday speech.
Haller, Thom. Rockley Bulletin (2007). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism
#30788
ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (formerly AECMA Simplified English) is a specification for writing aircraft documentation. The principles can be applied to all industry sectors. ASD-STE100 provides a set of writing rules and a dictionary of words and their meanings. It has a limited number of words; a limited number of clearly defined meanings for each word; a limited number of parts of speech for each word; a set of rules for writing text. This article outlines the standard, and shows how it helps to prevent ambiguity in text.
Unwalla, Mike. ISTC (2004). Articles>Writing>Minimalism>Controlled Vocabulary
#23903
Answering the Critics of Plain Language
Plain language has to do with clear and effective communication -- nothing more or less. It does, though, signify a new attitude and a fundamental change from past practices.
Kimble, Joseph. Plain Language Network (2003). Articles>Writing>Legal>Minimalism
#20391
Apple Help and John Carroll's Minimalism 
This report gives a brief overview of minimalism, a description of an Apple Computer documentation project, and a summary of my findings. It also provides some of my and my Apple colleagues' recommendations to improve both the user's experience and that of the instructional designers working to write Apple Help content. Through the course of this report, I will provide support for my hypotheses that (1) the current Apple Help model is not a minimalist help system, but that (2) users of most Apple software would not be well served by such a system anyway.
Tevenan, Matthew P. University of Washington-Seattle (2002). Books>Documentation>Help>Minimalism
#22147
An Application of the Principles of Minimalism to the Design of Human-Computer Interfaces
Minimalism in information design, specifically as applied to user tutorials and manuals, was introduced in the early 1980s through the work of Dr. John M. Carroll, then a cognitive psychologist at the IBM Watson Research Center. Since that time, theorists and practitioners have further elucidated the principles of minimalism and have attempted to apply it to a variety of situations in which people attempt to learn how to use a software application. Most recently, a new exposition of minimalist principles and practices was published by MIT Press. This work, Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel, represents the work of leading theorists and practitioners in the field.
Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (1999). Design>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Minimalism
#19839
Applying Minimalist Principles, Strategies, and Techniques
People use documentation differently from what we might expect. They don’t like to read; instead they jump to a task with prior knowledge, and sometimes don’t realize they’ve made an error. Understanding how users learn and applying John Carroll’s minimalist principles will help provide solutions to this problem. Documentation that has been successfully planned and designed for minimalism may take longer to create than other manuals, but reaps the benefits of making users more productive and happy, while reducing support calls, maintenance, translation, and publishing costs. The key factors to a successful minimalist approach (or any good documentation design) are a keen understanding of your users, prototypes designed to match tasks relevant to users, and iterative testing to improve each draft.
Lester, Susan M.J. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>TC>Writing>Minimalism
#14665
Arthur Levitt and the SEC: Promoting Plain English
Intercom's assistant editor profiles a recent recipient of STC's President's Award. The Securities and Exchange Commission was honored for requiring plain English in all disclosure statements filed with the SEC.
Nielan, Cate. Intercom (2000). Articles>TC>History>Minimalism
#31613
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the basic concepts of plain language.
#27212
A persistent rule of thumb in the programming trade is the 80/20 rule: '80 percent of the useful work is performed by 20 percent of the code.' As with gas mileage, your performance statistics may vary, and given the mensurational vagaries of body parts such as thumbs (unless you take the French pouce as an exact nonmetric inch), you may prefer a 90/10 partition of labor. With some of the bloated code-generating meta-frameworks floating around, cynics have suggested a 99/1 rule—if you can locate that frantic 1 percent. Whatever the ratio, the concept has proved useful in performance tuning.
Kelly-Bootle, Stan. Queue (2006). Articles>Language>History>Minimalism
#29359
Calculating Documentation Cruft
It's easy to describe documentation cruft, and often easy to identify it once you see it, but it's hard to estimate how 'crufty' a document actually is. Furthermore, it's often hard to convince the creators of a document that 'their baby' isn't as beatiful as they believe it to be.
Ambler, Scott W. Dr. Dobb's (2007). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>Minimalism
#27733
Clear as Mud: The Plot Thickens
A lot of the time, management-speak simply seems ridiculous. But campaigners for plain English say there is a more serious side to the issue.
BBC (1998). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism
#20916
Clear Writing: Ten Principles of Clear Statement
If you want to test the clearness of your writing, you may wish to consider using a 'fog index.' Fog indexes measure the complexity of writing samples, and often provide a means of calculating the reading or educational level required to understand a particular passage. Some fog indexes are available as computer software programs, or you may do the calculations yourself.
University of Missouri (1973). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism
#28671
Though many business strategies and publications continue to trumpet the power of simplicity in the design of digital products, for lots of companies and product teams, simplicity doesn't come easy.
Wroblewski, Luke. UXmatters (2006). Design>Usability>Methods>Minimalism
#27488
Conciseness is Key to Good Technical Documentation
One of the most important and difficult parts of technical documentation concerns writing in a concise manner. Technical writing is different than writing fiction or magazine articles, where a mood may be set or--in some cases--where space must be filled. (People seldom buy thin books.)
Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2005). Articles>Document Design>Technical Writing>Minimalism
#24090
A Critical Assessment of the Minimalist Approach to Documentation 
Carroll's (1991) minimal manual has been considered an important advance in teaching first-time users the basics of computer programs. Unfortunately, it is not very clear what minimalism really means. Practitioners, for example, will find it difficult to create their own minimal manual because the principles of minimalism have not been described in enough detail (see Horn, 1992; Tripp, 1990). It is also not yet settled that a minimalist approach is the most effective one because critical experiments have hardly been conducted. This study therefore closely examines the minimalist principles and claims. This paper describes the basic ideas of minimalism, its design principles and how they can be operationalized. A parallel is drawn between a minimalist and constructivist perspective on learning and instruction. Like minimalism, constructivism places a high value on experience-based learning in context-rich environments. Like minimalism, it stresses the need to capitalize on the learner's prior knowledge as much as possible. And like minimalism, constructivists urge learners to follow their own plans and goals, to make inferences, and to abstract principles from what they experience (see Duffy & Jonassen, 1991, 1992). An experiment is reported that examines the claims of minimalism. Strong and significant gains on several factors were found, all favoring the minimal manual over a control (conventional) manual. The discussion points to several issues that minimalism has yet to address.
van der Meij, Hans. ACM SIGDOC (1998). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Minimalism
#21682
Deadwood phrases are found in all types of writing. In technical writing they are to be avoided at all costs as documentation needs to be crisp, concise and accurate.
#30579
Design Critique: On Plain Language
An interview with Whitney Quesenbery about minimalism and plain language in user experience design.
Quesenbery, Whitney. Design Critique (2007). Articles>Interviews>Minimalism>Podcasts
#25061
Designing Minimalist Principles Into User Interfaces
Designing a user interface using minimalist principles for guided exploration can reduce the amount of paper and text necessary to document the system. Graphics in the interface can help the user grasp the concepts of the system, while dialog boxes, status information, and error messages can aid in recognition of success and recovery from errors. Online help can then be used as a backup for users if they get stuck. Reducing text and paper can reduce translation and printing costs, making this process very attractive.
Elser, Arthur G. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>User Interface>Usability>Minimalism
#28012
Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss
With training in everything from stage design to Egyptology to hypertext games to web projects, Reiss has had extensive practice in finding out what makes an experience work. Could these be the principles I've been waiting for? I tracked down Reiss in Vancouver to find out.
Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Theory>Minimalism
#24890
Downsizing Documentation: Meeting the Challenge
The redesign of the Microsoft Windows operating system along with a shrinking page count and Help file-size allocation, presented Windows User Education with a unique opportunity. We not only redesigned our entire documentation model, we also changed and improved our authoring tools. And, along the way, we changed how we did our work.
Bloch, Peggy, Phyllis Levy, Kimberly A. Parris and Gayle Picken. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Minimalism
#19703
Editing to Help Students' Backs
Perhaps the worst way to condense a book is by using smaller or condensed type; you want to be especially careful that all fonts are legible. Neither should you save space by tossing out pictures or diagrams that clarify subjects. Some engineers cram paragraphs together, but paragraphs are valuable structural devices that can make subjects more clear. So the clue to successful condensation of text is not mechanical miniaturization but literary efficiency.
Bush, Donald W. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Writing>Minimalism
#23672
Effective Writing, or Tips on How to Write English 'Gooder'
Some quick tips toward a clearer, more lucid, meaningful,…well, you know what I mean.
Perez De Tagle, Robert. MetroVoice (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism
#27994
The Elements of Style for Designers
What if E.B. White had written 'Hanging Commas 99% Bad' instead of a gentle list of reminders for young writers? Wodtke outlines how White's list of 22 reminders for writing can be just what young designers need.
Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Design>Web Design>Writing>Minimalism
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