Interactive Help: Adapting Content for Multiple Users  

Most online help systems present a 'one-size-fits-all' solution—fixed content for each topic—but users’ experience levels and backgrounds are complex and diverse. Users lose time and patience sifting through topics that either do not match the problem a user is trying to solve, or that present information that does not match a user's knowledge level. A group of Masters students at Carnegie Mellon University tackled this problem. As a course project, the team created an online help prototype that contains different levels of help, a prototype that gives users a choice about how much information they want to see.

Downs, Christina M. and Anne F. Jackson. STC Proceedings (2001). Design>Documentation>Online>Help

Quality Management: Fire Fighting to Fire Prevention  

Discover how a development team is transitioning from fighting to preventing fires by incorporating Quality Assurance (QA) testing as an ongoing part of the development process, rather than saving it for the finished product. Understand the pain of testing and rework at the end of the cycle, as well as the struggles during the transition to up-front QA. How did tools and processes change? What does the team have planned for the future? Learn by example how you, too, can make this transition in your company and start PREVENTING fires, not FIGHTING them.

Downs, Christina M. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Management>Assessment