The Awesome Power of Visualization 2: Death and Taxes 2007

Visuals that provide insights come from 1) a deep understanding of the goal / objectives 2) from thinking beyond what standard trend lines or stacked bar graphs can provide. Something non-normal to grab attention and yet communicate insights (sort of already contain recommendations and action items and not just data).

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Log Analysis

Babel Not: Machine Translation for the Technical Communicator

Machine Translation, though useful in certain cases, is still not, and may never be the one-size-fits-all solution for translation needs. Any translation used for commercial or professional purposes must be at the very least checked and double-checked by human translators.

WTB Language Group (2005). Articles>Language>Localization>Machine Translation

Babelfish: Real-Time Machine Translation on the Internet

On December 9, 1997, Digital Equipment Corporation and SYSTRAN A.G. launched AltaVista Translation Service, the first European language translation service for Web content. For the first time, non-English speaking users can translate information on the predominantly English speaking Web in real time.

Ament, Kurt. TC-FORUM (1998). Articles>Language>Localization>Machine Translation

Baby Duck Syndrome

What if something neither looks nor quacks like a duck, but users think it is a duck? The cranky user comments on baby duck syndrome and how it can trap users with systems and interfaces that don't really meet their needs.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2005). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

Baby Steps Can Lead To Giant Leaps In the Way Your Organization Approaches Usability  

Until recently, Landmark Graphics’ UNIX Documentation Group had written user documentation based upon information that was gleaned from surveys, fellow workers, and personal experience. We had little contact with our users and little opportunity to see how our users worked. Last year, we expanded our efforts. We talked to User Groups, supervised a booth at the company’s trade show, and began to visit our clients on site. But we didn’t stop there... we reported the results of our study at our yearly developer’s conference, and we developed a company-wide Usability SIG (Special Interest Group). This paper focuses on our experiences.

Stark, Mary Jo and Mary Rio. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Usability

Baby Steps To Writing Success

After a lifetime's worth of writing, I can file these baby steps under the 'wish I'd known when I started' category. They're vital. If you follow them, not only will you be successful at writing at some time in the future, you'll be successful right now.

Booth, Angela. Digital-E (2003). Articles>Writing

Back Off or Show Off

When the news or topic is most serious, understate. When the topic is least serious, exaggerate.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Journalism

Back to Fund-amentals: The Business Realities of Funding for Performance Support Projects    

Although electronic performance support systems (EPSSs) sound like exciting projects to technical communicators and instructional designers, many proposed EPSSs stay on the drawing boards because the organizations for whom they were designed choose not to fund them. In general, EPSSs require more up-front investment than traditional documentation and training. That additional expense, sometimes increasing up-front expenses by several times, could be enough to stop a project unless the designers can explain how the organization can benefit from this additional investment. In fact, most often, these organizations decline to fund the proposed EPSSs because the financial benefits of the EPSSs are not explained, and so the proposed EPSS is perceived to exceed the cost of designing and developing it. In other words, the businesses do not perceive that the EPSS is a good investment of their money.

Driscoll, Margaret and Colin Hynes. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Content Management>Proposals

Back to School: Convincing the Boss  

Becker discusses how to convince skeptical bosses that allowing technical communicators to enroll in continuing education classes will benefit the entire company.

Becker, Lynn A. Intercom (2000). Articles>Education

Back to the Future: Instructional Practices and Discourse Values    

When I think of writing-across-the curriculum—especially when asked to look toward the future, I am drawn to looking back to my initial involvement in WAC in the mid-1970's.

Herrington, Anne J. LLAD (1997). Articles>Language>Writing Across the Curriculum

"Backing Up" Doesn't Mean Retreating

Recently, several friends and colleagues have lost important files as a result of viruses, power failures, computer crashes, and miscellaneous other disasters that accompany working with computers. Each person could have minimized the consequences if they had developed and rigorously followed a simple backup strategy for their data. The fact that this happened to experienced computer users in each case leads me to believe that data loss is symptomatic of a broader problem: As technical communicators, our tight focus on documenting how to use a product sometimes makes us forget to document the consequences of using the product.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. TECHWR-L (2006). Articles>Technology>Security

The Backlash Against Jakob Nielsen and What It Teaches Us

While you may not agree with everything Nielsen has to say, he's definitely provided a number of good tips on how to go about usability, and raised the awareness of user experience issues to a much broader audience - including those who sign the checques. The downside is that Nielsen's promoted 'usability' as being synonymous with 'user experience' to many people and we'll be clarifying the difference for years to come I fear.

Olsen, George. Usability News (2002). Articles>Usability

Backtalk of a Situation (or Situational Feedback)

Making thoughts, ideas and plans explicit by writing them down or by developing an artifact, we create situations which talk back to us. For example, architects use the backtalk of their work extensively. When sketching, unexpecting patterns emerge, which are incorporated and maybe elaborated on in the drawing. Thus, the act of sketching is not only the conscious act of sketching the intended subject, but an interplay between the sketcher, the materials and possibly other situational constraints.

Soegaard, Mads. Interaction-Design.org (2006). Articles>Human Computer Interaction

A Bad Site: Martha Stewart Gets "Vasperized"

Even public relations web sites must be user-centered in design and content. Narcissistic, arrogant PR sites are counter-productive in the digital age of transparency, fault-admission, and altruism via shared information. Find out why Martha Talks is a web site failure from a usability and ethics point of view.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Public Relations>Marketing

Baking up a Batch of PDF Files  

Customize how Acrobat works for you by building and using batch sequences. The beauty of a batch sequence is that you can modify or run it as you like.

Baker, Donna L. Adobe (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Balancing Fidelity in Prototyping

Deceived by their ideas of what clients will accept, many web development teams build prototypes that are too costly and doesn't serve the purpose prototypes are supposed to. To exploit the full potential of prototyping, it's critical to choose the appropriate level of fidelity.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2005). Articles>User Interface>Prototyping

Balancing Paper and Online: Integrating CD-ROM into Document Libraries  

A panel of industry experts provides an overview of the CD-ROM publishing process—and its business issues, for technical communicators who are responsible for implementing CD-ROM publishing in their organizations. The panel will also discuss guidelines for integrating print and CD-ROM documents into a complete user support library, while still gaining the economies of CD-ROM publishing.

Gale, John, Stephanie L. Rosenbaum and Pamela Sansbury. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>CD ROM

Balancing the 5Es: Usability  

Just what do we mean by usability? Before we can set out to achieve it, we need to understand what it is we are trying to achieve. It's not enough to declare that from here on, our software will be more user friendly or that we will now be customer focused.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Cutter IT Journal (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods

Balancing the Elements in Job Aid Design  

Job Aids offer the Technical Communicator a unique opportunity to present acquired product knowledge in a creative format. In order to produce a successful job aid, you must select and blend elements of material, color, graphics, text, typography, and ergonomics in a manner that will be most useful to the intended user. The information for the Job Aid is culled from the larger project deliverables such as User Manuals or Procedure Guides; the creativity for the Job Aid comes from within and is driven by the needs of the user and the limitations of time, money, and environment.

Houterman, John and Kristine E. Henriksen. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Tutorials

Review: BAM! (Business Activity Monitoring)

BAM es el acrónimo de Business Activity Monitoring (Monitorización de la Actividad de Negocio), un campo emergente que promete incrementar la competitividad y la toma rápida de decisiones bien informadas, en la que la visualización de información tendrá un rol importante.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>Reviews>Software

Banned from Other Blog Sites

Freedom of expression is not ruling the blogosphere, because insecure bloggers will block your attempt to post comments, or even read their blog, should they decide you are "too controversial" or "too different from me". Opinionated blogs are the worst culprits of cowardly post blocking.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Barriers and Approaches to Reviewing Documentation

This article discusses some important issues in implementing a software documentation review process. If you are part of a small development organization and have few reviewer resources available, you may have to improvise techniques for providing the services and procedures suggested here.

Boston Broadside (1997). Articles>Documentation>Editing>Collaboration

Basic Communication Theory

In the 1940's researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories devised a model of the process of human communication. This model consists of numeous elements.

Malik, Suman. Technical Communications Group (2000). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory

A Basic Guide to Power Blogging

Blogs (web logs, online journals) are nearly mandatory now. From presidential candidates and CEOs to avid hobbyists and local clubs, blogs are being used to share ideas and opinions. As the next new communications/community building/marketing tool beyond conventional web sites, blogs offer a more dynamic, timely, and personal interactive experience. Join over 4 million other bloggers by following these easy steps to Power Blogging.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

Basic Indexing Techniques

If you're like most technical writers, you have had little (if any) training in creating indexes for the documents you produce. Even technical writers who graduate from Technical Communication degree programs receive little or no training in writing indexes. Consequently, most technical writers learn indexing 'by the seat of their pants ' and, unfortunately, many of the indexes they produce fall short of readers' needs.

Lathrop, Lori M. Boulder Writers Alliance (1997). Articles>Indexing