Trends in technical communication webcast
After some “interesting” technical challenges, the recording of our Trends in technical communication webcast is now available on Slideshare:
Author: Sarah O'Keefe
Webcast: Trends in technical communication for 2010
Sarah O’Keefe, Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf, and Tony Self of Hyperwrite
Find out where these three presenters see the industry going. This event is for managers with tech comm responsibility, with or without prior technical writing experience.
The Ideal Tech Comm Association?
There’s been a ton of discussion about the various organizations, especially STC, recently. With established associations, it can be difficult to take a completely fresh look because of the constraints of structure, organization, and tradition.
So, I thought I’d ask this question: What does your ideal association for technical communicators look like?
A mercenary view of conferences
In a post entitled, “Dueling Pianos: Do We Need STC?”, Kristi Leach writes this:
And maybe it’s time to start thinking about funding more regional conferences with lighter footprints rather than one, large conference. (Release Notes blog)
Lots of great discussion in that post and in the comments.
Calculating document quality (QUACK)
[I am working on a white paper version of the presentation I just gave at the STC Summit in Dallas. This is an excerpt. If you didn’t get a chance to see the session, I’m doing it as a webcast in mid-June (event details) and also (presumably updated) at the tekom conference in November.]
The state of structure in technical communication
In early 2009, Scriptorium Publishing conducted a survey to measure how and why technical communicators are adopting structured authoring.
The PDF landscape for DITA content
published in STC Intercom, May 2010
A condensed version of Creating PDF files from DITA content.
Download the PDF 
(130K)
There are numerous alternatives for producing PDF output from DITA content. The approach you choose will depend on your output requirements—do you need images floating in text, sidebars, and unique layouts on each page? How often do you republish content? How much content do you publish? Do you need to create variants for different audiences? Do you provide content in multiple languages?
Preview of coming a-QUACK-ions
My presentation for the STC Summit in Dallas is finally done. The session, “Managing in an XML environment,” is scheduled for Tuesday, May 4, at 4 p.m. Central time.
I hope to see you in Dallas, but if you can’t make the conference in person, I will also do a webcast version of this presentation on June 15 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. That event is free but does require registration.
I’m sure you’re wondering about the duck. In my presentation, I will be introducing a formula for measuring documentation quality. It’s based on Quality, Usability, and some other factors that spell out, you guessed it, QUACK.
And if that’s not enough to bring you to the session, I also have several other animals in my slides. Consider yourself warned.
But will it blend?
In choral music, “blend” refers to bringing together a diverse group of voices into a pleasing sound in which no single voice is dominant. As technical communication moves into a more collaborative approach to content, it occurs to me that both writers and musicians need to blend. Here are some choral archetypes and their writerly equivalents:
- Soloists—singers with big, powerful voices or writers with distinctive styles—are a challenge to blend. The singers must reduce their volume to match the voices around them and sing the music without adding ornamentation. Writers must refrain from their favorite distracting rhetorical flourishes.
- Section anchors—journeyman singers who know their parts cold and provide support to others singing the same part. Section anchors may not have the vocal quality of a soloist, but they are competent singers who are always on pitch, learn the music quickly, and follow the director. On the writing side, this is a person who writes competently, knows the product being documented, always follows the style guide, and learns quickly. In a writing group, these may be the team leaders. They are not necessarily the flashiest or the most gifted writers, but their content ranges from acceptable to excellent.
- Supporting players—these singers lack confidence, but can learn their part and sing it, provided that they have support from a section anchor. Left to their own devices, they may drift off into another part (usually abandoning harmony to sing the melody line). But as long as someone nearby is singing their part with them, they can stay on pitch and contribute their voices. This equates to writers, often with less experience, who need support, encouragement, and editing to stay within the style guide. They need help in most aspects of the content creation process. Over time, supporting players can improve and grow into more confident section anchors both in writing and in singing.
- Blissfully tone deaf—Fortunately, many people who are tone deaf (or simply cannot write) are aware of their limitation. But if you’ve spent any time at all in a volunteer choir, you’ve probably experienced people who make up for their lack of pitch by singing louder. In a writing context, your best bet for the tone-deaf (short of a new job!) is to give them assignments that minimize actual writing, such as creating basic reference information (not a lot of room to maneuver).
Our challenge, as writers, is that we have been accustomed to working solo, and now we must learn to blend our authorial voice into the larger group. The skills that make great soloists are not the same skills that make great contributors.
WritersUA: Wireframing tools and techniques
Michael Hughes, IBM ISS Security Systems
Yay, I finally get into a session.
Wireframes can be high fidelity (rendered dialog box that looks like the real thing) or low fidelity (sketch on a bar napkin). Fidelity actually has several components: appearance, medium, and interactivity.
Low fidelity appearance is something that looks (or is) hand drawn. High fidelity looks like a finished UI. Low fidelity appearance can be advantageous because people don’t get distracted.
Low fidelity medium is paper; high fidelity medium is an actual user interface.
Low fidelity interactivity is static—a picture of the thing. Then, you have scripted interactivity, where you take people through a scripted, controlled sequence. Next is intervention…the user says what they would do and then the UX designer shows them the next result. This can be done with paper prototypes. Finally, you have functional interactivity, where the various UI components actually work.
Low fidelity advantages: Quick, easier, and cheaper to create and modify. More importantly, people are more willing to give feedback on something that looks finished. People are afraid to give feedback on something that looks polished because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but if you provide a low-fidelity wireframe, you will get much more candid feedback.
Low fidelity disadvantages: You might get detailed feedback on irrelevant details (“this button should be square and not rectangular”). Limited ability to watch users interact. Some users cannot visualize the final product from a low-fidelity version.
High fidelity advantages: The prototype is more realistic. Easier to understand and less room for misinterpretations. You can watch the users interact with the design.
Low fidelity disadvantages: More expensive to create, less encouraging of feedback, people focus on minutiae, easy for designers to become emotionally involved.
(“You might throw in lorem ipsum text and then have people correct your Latin.”)
As you move farther into development, fidelity generally needs to increase.
Higher fidelity is important when you have higher usability risks due to lots of interactivity, complex UI, new interactions and content (for dev team or users), where in user task flow does UI occur (earlier is riskier).
Tools & their best uses
Bar napkins: Good for early conceptual designs, not so good for felt tip pens and putting a wet beer glass on.
Paper prototypes: Can create the various interfaces and do some paper-based flow testing. Not so good for a sense of scale or for assessing content.
PowerPoint: Can do hyperlinks and action buttons. Create each interface on a slide and then link them with PP features. Use slide sorter and rearrange to simulate various user workflows. For web design, put a browser window on the slide master to force you to stay in the browser space. Good for sense of physical navigation, planning layout, producing paper output, presenting look and feel for interactive web pages. Not so good for complex interactions and for look and feel of applications.
Visio: Pretty good set of widgets for making realistic-looking dialog boxes. Similar pluses and minuses as PowerPoint, but also good for look and feel of applications. Can use to incorporate wireframes with flowcharts, use case diagrams, and other macro-design tools.
Balsamiq Mockup: Presenter’s favorite tool (mine, too). Extended demo. If you’re interested, try it online for free. Realistic enough to help designer imagine what the user experience will be.
Pencil (Firefox plug-in): “they have the world’s worst online help”
Axure demo: Can build tooltips. Higher fidelity than Balsamiq. Lets you take note and annotate the fields and then print as a Word file. Use to lay out business rules, alternate text, and more. Suitable for Web 2.0 interactions, which are difficult or impossible in Visio.
