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Re: Usability test or make it right in the first place?
Subject:Re: Usability test or make it right in the first place? From:"Nancy S. Burns" <nburns -at- NOAO -dot- EDU> Date:Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:54:44 -0825
Thanks to Jim Curran <jcurran -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com> for making the following
simple yet valuable point. His approach, which is shared by many tech
writers, is a signicant way of adding value to our work as technical
writers :
>What I do is imagine myself as a naive user almost every minute as I work,
>I try to simplify everything, and I drop gentle hints around developers about
>what they might improve. Sometimes suggestions provoke no initial activity,
>but over time they grow in people's minds and get taken over as their own.
>If you can make gentle suggestions you'll go a long way toward improving
>products.
Nancy S. Burns
National Solar Observatory
Tucson, Arizona
e-mail: nburns -at- noao -dot- edu
"Writing a poem is taking over the 200-inch telescope carefully focused on
the galaxies born at the beginning of the universe and turning it to look
at a child eating mystery meat and string beans 300 miles away." from
"Incantation to Overcome Writer's Block, Maybe" by Lisa Yount.
