Defining an Effective Electronic Performance Support System

Most businesses have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of information employees require to perform tasks. Traditional approaches to training such as paper documentation, instructor-led training, or computer-based training (CBT) may have been effective in the past, but are not suitable to respond to the rapid changes in time, cost, and delivery of information today’s marketplace requires. At Unisys Corporation we have piloted an electronic performance support system that provides self-instruction for our clients at their point of need.

Racine, Sam J., Kristen E. Kralick and Sathya Yesuraja. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>User Interface>Usability>EPSS

Participatory Team Process in Information Design  

Information Design often focuses on product over process and ignores the valuable role that technical communicators can play in facilitating a true team design activity. In this paper, authors argue for a definition of information design that focuses on process and offer a proven methodology called Participatory Team Process in recognition of its roots in Participatory Design. Authors discuss tenets of methodology; spell out the technical communicator’s role as facilitator, information manager, writer, and editor; and offer three examples of products created with the process: a computer interface, safety rule book, and curriculum guide.

Racine, Sam J., Carol S. Hoeniges and Christina R. Schulz. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>TC>Participatory Design

Retrieving Product Documentation Online    

As our high-technology clients become increasingly knowledgeable of the power of electronic media, we are confronted with questions on how the Internet and intranets can be used to deliver technical documents online. For example, one of our clients, a large international firm whose high-technology products are currently supported by printed literature, wants to be able to deliver their product documentation electronically, on customer demand. Their customers, typically professionals working in a fast-paced technical environment, need quick and easy access to appropriate technical information to configure our client's products.

In this article, we discuss how we came to answer our client's question: 'How can we make it easier for our customers to retrieve technical documents from our electronic library?' As we discuss below, we decided that searching online libraries could be facilitated by making the organization of the library conceptually apparent.

Racine, Sam J. and Irving B. Crandall. Technical Communication Online (2001). Design>Information Design>Documentation

Using Corporate Lore to Create Boundaries in the Workplace    

In the workplace setting professionals use language to create boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, using the discourses of their professions and of specific workplace domain. Some boundaries are marked by formal tests--directed memos, posted notices, stamps that read "For Your Eyes Only." Less overt forms, and arguably more effective, are specific rhetorical devices relying on knowledge of the corporate and professional culture. People are included or excluded from such cultures by their knowledge and ability to manipulate professional fables and folklore, historical data, workplace experience narratives, and practical knowledge. These discourse practices can be used to promote solidarity and positively strengthen professional cultures, but they can also be used to obstruct communication and to create social fragmentation in the workplace. This article examines some examples of discourse practices among managers and employees in the customer service department of a large manufacturing firm, and shows how knowledge of the ways that language can both include and exclude people from cultural groups in the worksite can help professional communicators facilitate more effective and responsible communication practices in workplace settings.

Racine, Sam J. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Language>Workplace

Using Interactive Television to Teach Professional Communicators: Overcoming Perceptions and Negotiating First Impressions    

As an educational medium, interactive television (ITV) is shaped by perceptions that all participants bring into the ITV classroom. Many articles, handbooks, and other support material already deal with standard operating advice for leading courses using ITV; here, the authors focus on the physical and mental spaces produced by ITV and explore the expectations created by the presence of such technological artifacts as television screens, microphones, and lighting banks. They explain the roles that teachers and students may assume in the ITV classroom and discuss how lack of familiarity with the technology's purpose and potential tends to reify those roles and the interactions they proscribe. Finally, they offer suggestions for responding to these issues by concentrating on students' crucial first impressions with the technology–impressions that instructors can help negotiate so they and their students can engage in pedagogically sound, educationally rich interactions in the ITV classroom.

Racine, Sam J. and Denise Dilworth. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2000). Articles>Education>Multimedia