Key Concept Archive
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Always be learning: Lessons for writing instructions
You can learn interesting things that apply directly to you…from a totally different discipline. Recently, I was reading a story about Board Game Designers. I may be a board game geek, but that's not why the story was interesting. The…
- Key Concepts: best practices, soft-skills, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues:
UI/UX for technical communicators is the theme for TC Summer Camp 2017
I sit on the TC Camp board and am sponsoring the Structured Authoring workshop at TC Summer Camp in DC on September 9th.Every year, we ask what topic people want for the morning workshops. So far only one topic has…
- Key Concepts: collaboration, community, training and mentoring, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues: TC Camp
Teaching Martians to make a sandwich–How Technical Writers can improve patient safety
There's a well-known exercise to experienced technical writers: How do you teach a Martian to make a sandwich. It's so well known that we talk about it as an exercise in best practices for user experience and modern instructional design….
- Key Concepts: best practices, regulated industries, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues:
Who Are You? (I Really Wanna Know)
“Who is the audience for this project?” runs the risk of a smarty-pants response (“the user”). For a smart answer, take time to define and understand who is reading and using the information you develop. In this TC Dojo session,…
- Key Concepts: best practices, soft-skills, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues:
Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?
Technical writers are paying more attention to UI/UX because documentation is part of the user experience. Technical writers, who explain user interface elements and design how-to documents for user tasks and procedures, know when a design choice will have repercussions. We…
- Key Concepts: usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues:
Want to see what kind of software docs engineers celebrate?
I see posts on LinkedIn all the time about training in writing API docs or how best to document software systems. Here in Silicon Valley, it's the hottest sub-discipline in techcomm. In fact, API docs are so popular, they have an…
- Key Concepts: basics, best practices, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog, Liz Asks
- Venues:
12 tips from UX designers that Techcomm folks should know too
Next to API docs, UI/UX is one of the fastest growing sub-domains in technical writing. Not surprising, because documentation contributes to the user experience and explain how to use a product's user interface.In May, I spotted an article by Robert Hoekman,…
- Key Concepts: best practices, soft-skills, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues:
Tell a good story (It’s the shape of the curve that matters)
Seems like everyone is talking about story telling. Last April, it was the theme at the STC Spectrum conference. At STC Summit in 2015, Nancy Duarte gave the keynote based on research she did for her book, “Resonate: Present Visual Stories…
- Key Concepts: best practices, soft-skills, usability and user experience
- Filed under: Blog
- Venues: