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4181/5181-090February 5th |
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February 5th: Planning For Your User DocumentsAnnouncements
IRA-Career Essays Due I'll probably get around to picking these up at break. I sort of gave up on conducting a study on career-related perspectives of students in technical communication courses. I researched how students thought about careers. Time permitting, I'll discuss some preliminary findings. Let the Funner* Times Begin Below is a list of what we'll attempt to get to today. I'll give you a preview now:
We want to have 30 minutes or so at the end of class to develop a plan for User Doc #1. I know you can do it! Can you hear the drums Fernando? Huh...can you? Well, I can! Let's try to finish up a few more points from Cooper before moving on. I realize Cooper's revolution isn't convincing for some of you, and that's fine. I would never want you to consume anything uncritically; however, I also wouldn't want you to denounce something uncritically. Let's see what we can salvage from Cooper. Focused topics for us:
Take a look at the Index to Cooper's book. Go to the "S" section. What word is absent? What does that say about Cooper's focus? In other words, is he ignoring something rather important? English-Centric Topics (with a Toscanoian spin) I get the feeling after Ch. 13 that Cooper believes software (and, therefore, computers) can be made to do anything. I'm skeptical of that. I am, however, in total agreement about the problem of thinking that "natural language" will one day be the program language. Are "Natural" Languages possible? I recently had to discuss why the science of language (Linguistics, specifically) has important consequences for interactive technologies. I don't do digressions, so I won't get into that. However, here's a discussion on programming languages. Last week I prophesied (to some of you) the demise of the technical writing profession in its traditional, engineering-centered standard. If you didn't hear that, well, I'm telling you now. I don't believe the profession is going away completely, but I foresee a split in future technical writer identities: 1) the information designer (manager, place in the IT lifecycle) 2) the copy editor (contractual, temporary, LIFO) Based on my own observations, I've come to this conclusion. Am I right? I don't know. Do I have the final say? Absolutely not. This is a discussion that should take place, and I hope it prompts research (institutional and individual) and thinking. Professionals, teachers, and students ought to engage in discussions about the field's future. If anything, social and political changes (economic falls under social, by the way) will most likely alter all "work" in the future, and technical communication isn't exempt from change. But what changes? We won't know until after they happen, but we (in the larger sense, not just in class) can still make predictions, defend/refine those predictions, and prepare 21st-century citizens. Otherwise, we risk indoctrinating 21st-century workers with 20th-century workplace ideology that ignores our information-oriented economic base. Therefore, I see discussions of work as necessary to our class. Now, I know many of you aren't taking this course to become technical writers, but the career issues we bring up will be important for your understanding of workplace environments. Most of our discussions will be general, but they ought to focus on social forces that permeate through society, which you should consider a collection of (sub) cultures as opposed to a culture. I put together a webpage that lists jobs and job descriptions in technical writing. Most are in IT companies, but some are in other areas. This selection was just a google search (done a while ago), so I have no statistical basis for claiming that it is representative of the total population of technical writing jobs. However, based on my observations over the last decade, I think two jobs stand out as exemplary Tech Writing jobs: Consider opening these in different tabs, so you can more easily compare them.
The entire list is here, and I have another shorter page here. I keep meaning to add to these, but I don't get many job lists coming my way...I hope that's not a sign of the times. I'll try to add to these in the future. Notice the contractual/temporary vs salaried/permanent positions. Also, notice the skills required for the positions. The list is for reference and class discussion, so don't worry about job details showing up on an exam or quiz. I've been continuing to think about inspiration in technical communication. Do we ever inspire users to try to tackle instructions for a tool, system, or process? I don't think we always can (or should), but I'm suggesting you should try to inspire your users to want to learn more about the interface, instrument, or whatever it is you're attempting to document. Is it possible? I'm curious to see what you come up with. However, don't fixate on that because we'll go into more detail in the next couple classes. Frankly, it's hard to inspire with a search engine...or is it? Don't forget to consider personas vs. users. Thinking Through the User Experience This course is a Technical Communication course that is going to focus on writing user documents. In order to write user documents effectively, we ought to think broadly about user experiences and have that (critical) thinking inform creating documents for users.
User-Centered Technology: Chapters 1 & 2 Did anyone notice a difference between Cooper and today's reading? User-Centered Technology is geared toward an academic audience (much like this best-selling manifesto) and explores usability or thinking about the user experience from a theoretical perspective. Of course, it's still useful for all of you who will do some form of technical communicating in the future. Cooper's book is aimed at designers and business people in IT. Here's a page devoted to notes on Johnson's book. 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. Interactive Design vs. Usability Testing There's an interesting assignment that comes from a previous textbook I used for this class on paper prototyping: Exercise: Working in groups, create a "paper" prototype for an information kiosk to assist visitors to your campus or office building or to a shopping mall or museum. The kiosk will be located in the lobby or central location (you define where). Visitors unfamiliar with the services or locations of departments would consult this kiosk to get a sense of where to go and how to get there. Consider the types of visitors you need to help and the types of information they will want. Create a profile of your primary visitors and tasks. Then, create the "interface," beginning with the main screen, from which the user can select other screens for information. When the task is complete, a representative from another group will become the target user for you kiosk to test the usability of your prototype. (Exercise comes from Barnum, 2002, p. 137)** Instead of using index cards or paper, use the Notepad and have separate text files (.txt) represent different cards--using word documents would be goofy, so use Notepad. This ought to have a rather interesting effect on the user. When you come to the part where you bring in another user, describe (meaning write this down on something) how the user adjusts the prototype (the "cards") you created. Make sure you ask the user to arrange the cards on the desktop as they would want them to appear on a kiosk interface--don't coach them. Therefore, you create the cards, but let the user arrange them. One of you should host the final prototype on his/her webpage, but each member should have a link to the prototype. Make screen captures or an entire screen capture of the layout the group decides. Those of you who are testing these designs, I want you to report back to class why you arranged the cards or adjusted the contents of the cards (adding or deleting) the way you did. In other words, what is your mental model of how that particular kiosk should be set up? Time permitting, I want to play a little memory game based on the short- and long-term memory but, if we're short on time tonight, we'll skip it. Please logon to Moodle and answer the following 1), 2), and 3) in the "Computer Literacy" discussion forum:
Class Group Work (time permitting) I want you to turn to the person to your left and observe him or her doing the following:
Then, the person you observed should observe you do the following:
Assuming you're thinking about search engines, come up with a way to help a novice user "have fun with a purpose". You'll have a chance to test your classmates next class, so for the rest of class finish a rough draft for User Doc #1. Your User Doc should include the following when you turn it in:
The meta-analysis persona document, which includes the three sub bullets, is one document. The last bulleted item is your actual steps or procedures for getting a user through the search engine query you're using. You could also include a description of the instrument with the actual instructions. If you find that you're done after 3 steps, consider describing the features of the search engine's results. As I said before, 10 steps is a bit much, but you can describe the results if you seem to be finished after a few steps. These word-processed planning documents are part of your User Doc grade, so make sure you do them. User Doc for Uploading Webpages When you were reading Cooper's book, did you think about the frustrations you had with not only uploading a webpage but documenting that process? What parallels did you find? If you have some more time, let's try to perfect those user docs from a couple weeks ago. Before We Go... Make sure you have a rough draft for your User Doc #1 next class (2/12). You'll be doing a user test on two of your classmates. Your User Doc #1 is due in two weeks (2/19). What?!? Funner isn't a word. I mean, it's not in the dictionary...or is it. Click below for the scanned dictionary entries: Words scanned from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1999. p. 472 and p. 1194, respectively. In fact, this is one of the dictionaries used in the Writing and Resources Center. How about concision instead of conciseness? For an in-depth discussion on the "proper" usage of fun, check out World Wide Words or Grammar Girl's Discussion. Remember, when it comes to word usage, it's not who says it, it's who hears it. **Barnum, Carol M. (2002). Usability Testing and Research. New York: Longman. |
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