(section 090)
January 19th: More Introduction and Previews

EGSA Conference--Next Friday 1/29 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

An Overview

• What this class is
• What this class is not
• How theory can save your life
• How theory can overcomplicate your assignments
• A little history of User Documentation
  • Usability--"a product's usability is deterimined by the user's perception of the quality of the product, based on the user's ease of use, ease of learining and relearning, the product's intuitiveness for the user, and the user's appreciation of the usefulness of a product" (Barnum, 2002, p. 6).
  • Usability Testing
  • User-Centered Design

Don't forget, your syllabus is online--I won't be printing any hardcopies.

Does Moodle Work?

Well, I know it works, but I'm not sure if you can view the course content. ENGL 4181 and 5181 should be combined into one course. I believe I granted everyone access, so let's see if it worked. Please logon to Moodle and see if the following discussion comes up in the first box under Topic outline:

Click on Discussion on Users Forum

Please separate your responses--1) and 2).

1) What makes computer and electronic products so difficult for the average user to use?

2) Defend or refute the following statement: The user needs to be more prepared and deal with increased complexity because that necessarily brings increased functionality. And why?

If we can't get into Moodle, respond to these prompts and post them on a new page--link to it from your home page.

Assessing Technologies

Let's break for a moment and take out all our technologies. I'm curious to see what "we" carry around with us daily.

How to Approach the Readings

Obviously, you should approach and finish them prior to coming to class. If you haven't gotten them yet, now would be a good time to go to Amazon.com.  I got HAL in a week for less than $5--including shipping.

Let's talk a little bit about them.

• Pringle, Alan S. & O'Keefe, Sarah S. Technical Writing 101.
  • Nuts and bolts guide to technical writing
  • Applied as opposed to theoretical
  • Technical Writer job specific
  • Advice for gathering information
• Degani, Asaf. Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001.
  • Interface-oriented (HCI)
  • System states or behaviors--what's going on
  • Warnings
• Cooper, Alan. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity.
  • Business Goal--saves money
  • New Economics--accounting vs. design
  • Where do companies spend their money?
    • Reducing costs on programming vs.
    • Increasing cost on research, planning, and designing
  • User-inspired (or, actually, persona-inspired) designs
  • Bias towards hiding processes
  • Tasks vs. Goals (p. 150)
  • Cooper's vision doesn't begin at documentation...but he can still help us
• Alan Cooper, "Father of Visual Basic"

IRA-Career Essay

After you've read Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum, I know you'll have an opinion or two about his view of the IT world, a world all of us inhabit and some of us think we run. As you read this book, I want you to think about how the information could be useful for your career or career path. You might not be able to claim Cooper directly is useful, but he may be indirectly useful by getting you to think about what your future may hold. After you've finished the book (and I'm giving you lots of time to read this book), I want you to write an essay, a career-oriented essay inspired by Cooper.

All essays are meant to be at least five pages in a normal typed, double-spaced format. All should have a title other than, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum Essay." Also, all essays should be well written, unified, coherent documents nearly free of mechanical, logical, or structural errors (representative of appropriate upper-level college writing). See the Assignments Page for more detail.

Career-Related Study

Last class I mentioned that I was planning to do a study on career-related perspectives of students in technical communication courses. I have more information about this study, so let's head on over to the study's consent/overview page.

Occupation Links

On the daily activities page (our class index page), I have links to career statistics based on major and occupation. Of course, everyone know exactly what he or she wants to do in the future, so they links might not be of any use...

Career Choices by Degree and Median Salaries
Salary Scales For English Majors
Salary Scales For Computer Science Majors

Accessing Your 'H' Drive Off Campus

UNC Charlotte has a great way for you to store class files and other stuff. Whenever you log into the UNCC system on campus, your 'My Documents' folder is a remotely stored section of the server. You can also access this storage space when you're off campus!

Do you want to learn how? Type the following into your web browser:
https://webf.uncc.edu/NetStorage/
- or -
http://webpage.uncc.edu/.

Maintain a Website all Semester

Some of you may have a webpage...some of you should, at least. Let's do a user document together.  Let's introduce all of you (or review) screen capture software; have an MS Word doc open.

The Assignments page has information on the web site I'd like you to have this semester. Let's head on over to your online requirements.

My First User Document
(time permitting)

Using all your technical communication ability and expertise, create a user document for creating/updating a UNCC student's webpage. Use any program you'd like to create this document (MS Word, In Design, Dreamweaver, etc.), but I eventually want this online...like next week.  Please include the following original items:

• Title
• Overview--explain what the person will do
• Screen captures (or other graphics)
• Steps for updating/creating a UNCC student webpage

The parameters are up to you, but I want you to try to complete this in the time remaining. You may capture most screen elements by pressing

[Alt] + [Print Screen]

Doing so captures the active window.

Before We Go...

Your first assignment will be an essay on Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum. This is a diagnostic essay, so please do it. This assignment is due in two weeks--February 2nd. Let's get a preview of the assignment if we have time.

Our discussion will be next week (it will probably spill over to 2/02 as well).