Good Web Designers Create High ROI
Thanks to the Internet, businesses no longer need to outspend their competitors to outperform them on the marketing front. Small companies can go toe-to-toe with established, deep-pocketed enterprises,...
View ArticleDITA Metrics: Reuse Strategy and Savings Trend With Warehouse Topics
This paper is the third in the DITA Metrics series which examines the cost and reuse values for a DITA project to determine DITA ROI. The concepts and ideas discussed are based on the cost model...
View ArticleHow to Cut Down Your Commitments
Do you feel constantly busy – and in demand? Are you the one person at work who everyone seems to ask when they need a favor? Do you have a host of family obligations – driving your kids all over town,...
View ArticleAsking for Help is a Productivity Tool
I know some people see asking questions as a sign of weakness or insecurity (and believe others will view them that way), and that asking questions can produce answers we don’t want to hear. Both of...
View ArticleNine Reasons Why a CMS Does Not Deliver as Promised
We have all probably stumbled upon stories of people frustrated about their company’s (newly installed) Content Management System that doesn’t deliver the expected results. Often the system itself...
View ArticleThe Process Police
I have dozens of books on my shelves describing different processes for doing design, from mental models to personas to content audits to user testing to you-name-it, and I follow almost none of them....
View ArticleDoing User Research Faster and Cheaper
Clearly, some information about users is better than none. In this column, I’ll review a variety of ways in which you can scale back the time it takes to do user research, while still providing...
View ArticleDon't Leave IT to the Techies
Every year about 50% of a company's spending, on average, is directed toward information communication technologies. Despite this willingness to invest in technology, 68% of information technologies...
View ArticleThe Roberts Rules of Order: Essential for UX?
I'm working these days on trying to design a report format around a particular data security standard. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the standard and what it requires of users and what...
View ArticleRequirements vs. Constraints
The more feature-rich a particular design approach is, the more it delights product management. Of course, that starts to overload available engineering resources which drives their delight down. Being...
View ArticleActively Managing Your Schedule
Uncertainty is the only certainty of a freelancer’s life, but it’s also a problem that afflicts wage slaves, as I learned during the first 15 years of my career. Something unexpected always seems to be...
View ArticleDevelopers and the Missing Help File
Sometimes our developers are just a bit too eager. It doesn’t happen that often but when it does, it takes us Technical Writers by surprise. One such occasion happened today when the first build was...
View ArticleSupporting User Experience Throughout the Product Development Process
For most of us, the ideal when working on a product-development project would be to work with a group of like-minded professionals, each with their own areas of responsibility, but sharing the same...
View ArticleTwenty-Two Questions Technical Writers Should Ask When Starting a Software...
Having worked on a number of software projects over the last few years, I’ve put together the following list of questions the technical communicator should ask when starting a software project. There’s...
View ArticleThe Social Why of Project Failures
Project failures are a part of the IT landscape to the point I am surprised that people have not become bored with the topic. Maybe they have and just see it as an integral part of the rich fabric that...
View ArticleTurning Unofficial Documentation into an Opportunity
I learned that when I encounter rogue documentation, instead of feeling threatened or replaceable, I should take it as an opportunity to analyze what I’m doing and where the holes are. It’s an...
View ArticleNo One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas
No. One word, a complete sentence. We all learned to say it around our first birthday, so why do we have such a hard time saying it now when it comes to our work? Guilt. Fear. Pressure. Doubt. As we...
View ArticleKick Ass Kickoff Meetings
During project-based work, every freelancer, agency, or internal department has “the kickoff meeting.” In theory, this meeting should have all the energy, excitement, and potential of the opening salvo...
View ArticleBehind the Kimono
We don't show our work. Developers do it. Graphic designers do it. But have you ever seen a wireframe from a prominent web designer?
View ArticleFour Web Project Problems Content Strategy Can Solve
Here’s the cool thing about content strategy. It doesn’t just tell you what content should go on your site, but it answers a whole bunch of other important questions.
View ArticleGet Started with Git
If you’re a designer or developer, you’ve probably heard about Git, and you might know that it has become immensely popular, especially among the open source community. Though it may seem cryptic at...
View ArticleArt Direction and Design
Glorifying the supposed arrival of art direction on the web is one of the latest trends in interactive design. There are several galleries devoted to it. There’s even a plug-in for it. Sadly, many...
View ArticleWorkplace Realities 3: Doc Plan Pains and Empowerment
I know I like to complain about how technical writers are left out of the picture. Not invited to meetings with users, not adequately informed about projects ahead of time, not invited to the prototype...
View ArticleTen Quick Tips for Project Managers about Help Content
Here’s my stab at the ten things project managers should know when working with technical writers. Imagine formatting these ten sentences in a neat little card that you periodically email to project...
View ArticleTactics for Survival: A Technical Writers Field Guide to Overcoming the...
These are the realities of the workplace. I hope tech comm educators aren’t preparing a whole new crop of sheep to accept and endure these practices. I hope they’re teaching students to be empowered,...
View ArticleIt’s Not a Training Issue
To these stakeholders, it seemed easier to change users’ behavior than to change the design of their notoriously problematic, difficult to modify, internal enterprise application—and actually solve its...
View ArticlePower or Collaboration—What’s Most Valuable to a UX Leader?
Do UX leaders need to acquire and wield power to ensure their organizations can produce game-changing design? If they don’t already have executive support, can they can collaborate their way to success?
View ArticleTreat Documentation Like Software
Updating software is fairly easy. In many cases, you don’t have to download an update or patch — it’s automatically pushed to you. If you’re dealing with a Web application, updates are done behind the...
View ArticleIntegrating UX into Agile Development
How do your organizations integrate UX design and user research into agile development processes? How would you map out your entire development process, step by step?
View ArticleHow the Power of Free and Scarcity Influence Decision Making
In previous columns, I’ve discussed mental shortcuts and their effect on decision outcomes, as well as loss aversion—the fact that people are much more sensitive to losses than gains. When loss...
View ArticleTreat Documentation Like Software
Maybe documentation can take a cue from the development world and issue updates to docs in the same way as updates to software.
View ArticleFollowing A Web Design Process
Almost every Web designer can attest that much of their work is repetitive. We find ourselves completing the same tasks, even if slightly modified, over and over for every Web project. Following a...
View ArticleThe Miseducation of the Doodle
The teacher who chastised you for “mindless doodling” was wrong on both counts. Far from shutting down the mind, the act of doodling engages the brain in the kind of visual sense-making people have...
View ArticleA Modest Proposal
Proposals are difficult. They take too long. They’re usually an exercise in unrequited love. Is it any surprise creative professionals cringe when it’s time to put one together? Proposals are, however,...
View ArticleRFPs: The Least Creative Way to Hire People
If you work in any kind of service industry you’ve undoubtedly come across the Request For Proposal, or “RFP.” The RFP process has become a standard by which organizations solicit competitive bids. It...
View ArticleManaging Documentation Projects
A presentation to tcworld India offering advice about managing technical writing projects.
View ArticleManaging Documentation Projects in a Collaborative World
In keeping with our promise to provide an article on watercooler chats , here is a summary article of the last watercooler chat, which was a four-part series on "Managing Documentation Projects in a...
View ArticleGetting Sidetracked Projects Back on Track
How do you get your project back on track? How do you turn the client around to your ideas? Over the years, we’ve found ourselves in this exact situation and have learned a few tricks that gets our...
View ArticleAgile Technical Writing Basics
Unfortunately, nobody wrote instructions for Agile technical writers, so peculiarities of profession need to be studied out.
View ArticleAdjusting to Scrum
Scrum, the new development methodology in the Agile development family, is fast gaining acceptance in software development. But how can writers, who have little or no experience in any of the...
View ArticleAgile for Information Development
Software development methods seem to change more often than the seasons, and just when information development professionals are familiar with one approach a new one comes along. One method that has...
View ArticleManaging Documentation Reviews
Advice about how to manage a documentation review process.
View ArticleWorkflow Orchestration for the Wary
Web developers are often expected to overcome any remaining reluctance to take charge of coordinating their own workflows. Fortunately for us, the methods for defining sensical workflow for projects...
View ArticleWill Structure and Style Make Documentation Processes Less Costly?
Developing content is time-consuming, and so is maintaining it. Eliminating some of the content would make it easier to maintain — unless that content is still needed by users. In that case,...
View ArticleI'm a Technical Communicator. Why Project Management?
Project management? Why do technical communication students need to know project management?I tell my students that even if they never create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, they should understand...
View ArticleTask-Driven User Interfaces
While it’s easy to see the direct impact that the user experience of a consumer application has on user conversions, that’s not true of user experiences for the enterprise segment of the software...
View ArticleUX Leadership, Part 1: The Nature of Great Leaders
This column is the second in our series that highlights our insights on what it would take for companies to go from producing dreary, overly complex user experiences to producing truly great user...
View ArticleThe Core Model: Designing Inside Out for Better Results
If you’ve worked on a website design with a large team or client, chances are good you’ve spent some time debating (arguing?) with each other about what the homepage should look like, or which...
View ArticleStopping the Infighting About Digital Standards
Organizations that struggle with their digital presence often do so because they haven’t established proper governance. But good governance is worth pursuing: clear policies and processes can answer...
View Article80/20 Practitioners Make Better Communicators
Approaches that are either too general or too specific can easily overwhelm practitioners—and derail budgets. Fresh from recent experiences with two large-scale redesigns, Katie Kovalcin suggests that...
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