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Subject:Make it Pretty for the SMEs You Want to Interview From:"Cindy K. Kight" <Cindy -dot- Kight -at- Marconi -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 17 May 2001 11:47:27 -0700
Presenting information in an attractive format is a valuable skill. It
makes your documents more readable and, therefore, more usable and
effective. When someone asks you to make a document 'pretty' they are
asking for your expertise - they just don't know what to call it.
In fact, 'prettying up' a document helped me gain credibility with a
difficult SME. Instead of e-mailing the finished document, I took hard
copies of both versions and went over them with him in person. ("So, I
wanted to make sure that this is what you wanted. I took some liberties
with it, hope you don't mind. The content is pretty good, but there are
some usability issues...<snip>...needs some white space...<snip>...your main
points here, they're great but they get lost in this long paragraph, so I
emphasized them with this bulleted list...<snip>...this part needed to be a
little more concise, so I reworded it...") Management loved the document.
The SME asked, "How do you know all this stuff?"
It would be nice to be granted respect and professional recognition from the
beginning, but sometimes you have to work at it.
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