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Erika,
I haven't taken a look at the Intercom article, but user experience
professionals are becoming more prevalent, and some of their advocates
are quite passionate. Alan Cooper approaches it from the product design
perspective. (I'm sorry I don't have the URL at the moment, but I'd
definitely suggest looking at both his site and his interviews, which
are widely available on the web. He did one very interesting one with
Jeff Beck, author of the Xtreme Programming methodology.) Also check out
www.ideawatch.org (I think that's it--I'll check), which is by tech
writers. I love that site.
I've found it interesting that when this approach is applied to both
application design and the interface itself, my writing is almost
automatically user-task oriented because the application itself is. I
don't have to spend nearly as much time documenting what the application
does and can focus almost entirely on what the user can do with it. Even
then I don't have to spend nearly as much time doing that. And it's
absolutely delightful to work with an engineer who's interested in this
stuff; when I tell him something isn't intuitive, he listens and changes
it. You want a challenge to the tech writing profession? Interfaces that
are totally intuitive! ;o)
I'm also working on two different software programs where the interfaces
are built around objects. The original help systems for both apps are
also built around the interface instead of what the users do with the
interface. I have some definite writing in front of me.
Connie and Simon both listed some definite directions for technical
writers. I'm still enjoying being able to focus solely on writing after
a 20-month stint where I had to think about almost everything but and
yet still produce good writing. But everything I did in those 20 months
has given me a much more well-rounded perspective from both a business
and technical sense that I'm fully prepared to dive back into those more
complex jobs when this contract is eventually over.
Lisa
-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Erika Yanovich
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:51 AM
<snip>This reminds me of a title a saw in the recent Intercom magazine:
director of user experience. It's so wide that can actually include
anything. First, I thought it's funny. I guess it's not. Erika
-----Original Message-----
From: Giordano, Connie [mailto:Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM]
<snip>
Which means writers may have to do what I've been researching and
advocating for awhile: transform ourselves into user support/product
design specialists. I do so little traditional technical writing these
days, they really ought to change my job title.</snip>
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