RE: The coming predominance of user experience and technical communications

[Beth Agnew <Beth -dot- Agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>]

I'm naïve enough to keep trying to get on that ship. :-) I do it by swimming
upstream. Employers/clients who know the value a techwriter brings to
documenting confusing interfaces can easily be convinced that if I look at
the interface while it's still in development, I can head off problems with
bad labels, poor placement, and non-intuitive workflow. Better yet, if they
let me work with the designers and analysts during the requirements and
specifications stages, we can create something that has far better usability
than if left to the developers to figure out. At that point I'm not so much
a UE as a user advocate, asking the questions no one else asks: "Won't that
be confusing to the user?" "How does the user get from here to there?".

Remember we had all those applications with the three-pane layout and a
navigation tree on the left, not because it was an intuitive design but
because it's what came with the MFC development tools and was easy to
implement. 
--Beth

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+beth -dot- agnew=senecac -dot- on -dot- ca -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+beth -dot- agnew=senecac -dot- on -dot- ca -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Laura Lemay
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:50 PM
To: Chris Borokowski
Cc: techwr-l
Subject: Re: The coming predominance of user experience and
technicalcommunications

Chris Borokowski wrote:
> It seems to me this is the kind of role technical communicators/writers
> should get involved with. 

I've been hearing that argument for 20 years.

In my experience there just isn't a lot of movement between tech writing 
and UE.  I don't know if this is because tech writing tends to be a 
marginalized profession to begin with, if we don't stand up for the 
breadth of our skills, or if there's some grand conspiracy by The Man to 
keep us down.  I've seen a whole lot more cross-pollination between 
graphic design and UE...mostly it seems because the designers arealready 
there touching parts of the interface so it is less of a leap for them 
and there is less management persuading required.

These days those enlightened companies that have a dedicated UE role at 
all seem to be hiring UE engineers with actual UE degrees.  Now that 
there are more universities offering more degree programs in UE and 
graduating more people all the time I suspect that trend will continue.

Frankly I think the ship has sailed on this one and we tech writers did 
not board when we had the chance.

Laura



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