EServer TC Library: The Most Popular Technical Communication Website in the World

The EServer TC Library dwarfs all other tech comm sites. Granted, EServer TC Library is a library, which people primarily use to browse content located elsewhere, so it’s perhaps not in the same category as the other sites. Still, the sheer amount of traffic is impressive. I caught up with Geoffrey Sauer, the creator of the EServer TC Library, and chatted with him over email.

Sauer, Geoffrey and Tom H. Johnson. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Interviews>TC>Body of Knowledge

Guiding Users with Persuasive Design: An Interview with Andrew Chak

An easy way to define persuasive web design is to contrast it with usable design. Usability focuses on giving users the ability to complete a transaction if they so desire. A usable site makes it easy for users to complete transactions, from buying products to convincing users to read featured articles. Unfortunately, having a usable web site is not always enough to convince users to transact. Even if a user can complete a transaction on your site, doesn't mean that they will transact. To be successful, sites must go beyond Usability by focusing on Persuasive Design.

Perfetti, Christine and Andrew Chak. User Interface Engineering (2003). Articles>Interviews>Usability>Persuasive Design

Persuasive Design with Spencer Gerrol

Recently I attended a great presentation by Spencer Gerrol (Human Factors International) in Atlanta entitled “Beyond Usability: The Science of Persuasive Design”. Gerrol discussed how important it is to not only make our websites easy to use, but to make people want to use them. He then discussed 6 key principles we can use to persuade our customers as well as some important persuasion tactics to keep in mind. The presentation began with a brief discussion of the difference between usability and persuasion.

Martin, Lauren. Lauren Martin (2008). Articles>Interviews>Persuasive Design

Jensen Harris Tells Dan About Microsoft Office's Ribbon Interface

Dan Harrelson, design technologist at Adaptive Path, recently spoke with Jensen Harris, Group Program Manager of Microsoft’s Office User Experience team. Jensen was one of the key designers behind the new Ribbon user interface introduced in Office 2007. Dan and Jensen chatted about Office’s redesign and the techniques he uses to keep the focus on user needs within an organization the size of Microsoft.

Harrelson, Dan. Adaptive Path (2008). Articles>Interviews>User Interface

Leah Talks With Audrey Chen About Bringing IA to Comedy Central

Leah Buley recently sat down to talk with Audrey Chen, the Senior Information Architect at Comedy Central. Audrey has led the IA for sites such as TheDailyShow.com and ComedyCentral.com.

Buley, Leah. Adaptive Path (2008). Articles>Interviews>Information Design>Case Studies

Scott Abel Explains Content Management Concepts  

Scott Abel is a content management strategist and structured-XML evangelist who helps organizations improve the way they author, maintain and deliver their information assets. He also maintains The Content Wrangler (www.thecontentwrangler.com), a blog for technical writers. More importantly, perhaps, he has a tendency to explain run-of-the-mill business practice in an honest and engaging way.

Botkin, Katie. Multilingual (2009). Articles>Interviews>Content Management

Trends in Web Design Involving WordPress

This week I caught up with Debbie Campbell, a Colorado web designer and developer and the owner of Red Kite Creative, and asked her about the latest trends in web design. I’ve been following Debbie on Twitter for a while. This week she posted a few tweets about web design and WordPress, so I asked her to share a little more.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Interviews>Content Management>Web Design

A Student's Interview on the Field of Technical Communication

It is not often I’m contacted by a student to respond to an informational interview, so it was a pleasure when I was contacted early last week by a student in Eugene, Oregon USA to see if I would respond to his by email, and some great questions he had too. With the student’s permission, I’m posting the interview here in the event his questions reflect those of other students, whether in France or anywhere else.

Wion, Destry. STC France (2009). Articles>Interviews>TC

Strategic Numbers: Discussing the Value of Design With Sara Beckman

We’re excited to bring Sara Beckman from the faculty at the Haas School of Business back into the Adaptive Path fold. We first worked with her in 2003 on our groundbreaking report, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience.

Rutter, Kate. Adaptive Path (2009). Articles>Interviews>Graphic Design>Assessment

Should You Attend University for Web Development?

Especially in the web development world, it's possible that the latest technologies and trends are being taught on blogs, rather than in the classroom. On a weekly basis, I receive emails from University students informing us that our "little ole'" blog has taught them more than their college professors. Considering the frequency at which these flattering emails occur, it does raise an interesting question: 'Is University out-dated?'

Way, Jeffrey. NetTuts (2009). Articles>Interviews>Web Design

Ginny Redish — Letting Go of the Words

Anticipate the reader’s questions and then construct your writing as a response. This type of writing focuses you on your audience and gets you thinking about the specific questions, concerns, issues, and other problems your users might have. Each sentence you write should somehow answers those questions — you construct the conversation.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny' and Tom H. Johnson. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Interviews>Writing>Podcasts

Interview with Claude Vedovini (Part 1) - DITA

Claude Vedovini is the developer behind the DITA Open Platform. In Part 1, we talk about the DITA OP and other aspects of DITA in general.

Vedovini, Claude. DITA-XML Community of the Rockies (2009). Articles>Interviews>DITA>Podcasts

Why Content Strategy Is the Key to Marketing

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Hoehn from Kodak at Online Marketing Summit - DC last week. Tom has a really cool job at Kodak, where he is director of brand communications and convergence media.

Pulizzi, Joe and Tom Hoehn. Junta42 (2009). Articles>Interviews>Content Management>Planning

The State of Structured Authoring in Technical Communication

In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process of moving to structured authoring, have already adopted structured authoring, or are undecided. Only 16% of respondents said they were not moving to structured authoring. She also discusses other survey results, such as the adoption of DITA and mistakes people make in moving to structured authoring.

Johnson, Tom H. and Sarah S. O'Keefe. Tech Writer Voices (2009). Articles>Interviews>Document Design>Podcasts

Madcap’s Flare-DITA Solution

In this podcast, Mike Hamilton of Madcap Software talks about their phased approach to handling DITA with Flare. In Phase I, you’ll have the ability to import DITA topics and export to webhelp and other targets. In this sense, Flare functions as a transform engine. In Phase 2, you can use Flare for native DITA authoring. Phase 1 is on the cusp of release, but Phase II won’t be available until quarter one of next year.

Johnson, Tom H. and Mike Hamilton. Tech Writer Voices (2009). Articles>Interviews>DITA>Madcap Flare

Harnessing the Power of Annotations -- An Interview with Dan Brown

Annotations come in all shapes and sizes depending on the artifact and the intent of the document. People are probably most familiar with wireframe annotations, where the author calls out areas of the screen to describe functionality not immediately discernible from the picture alone.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Interviews>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration

Endless Possibilities: Norm Walsh on the Changing Nature of Publishing

Why XML documents aren’t a good fit for relational databases, how university professors are creating custom text books for students, and find links to several innovative projects that are demonstrating the power of XML and its cousin XQuery.

Walsh, Norman and Scott Abel. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Interviews>Information Design>XML

Interview: Opera Software’s Chris Mills  

The two main and very closely-related foci of my job are evangelizing open standards and education. I spend a lot of time writing about relevant topics and giving lectures at universities to promote better use of web standards on courses and among students. I believe that the best way to improve the state of the Web is to start with those new to learning the trade.

Armitage, Raena Jackson. SitePoint (2009). Articles>Interviews>Web Design>Education

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales, customer contact – all of that is supremely manageable by a very small team. In the traditional model, you have this big corporation where the creative department is in the back, and they’re those wacky people with the Tabasco ties and chattering teeth in their cubicle, and everybody is a little afraid of them because they’re so “wild.” The rest of the company is the marketing, production, distribution, all of that. Well, our idea was that the little creative team could do everything.

Coudal, Jim. Design Glut (2009). Articles>Interviews>Graphic Design>Collaboration

The Web as a Conversation

Writing toward personas can help produce a successful form of content creation. Of course the next step after writing is to test the content with your customers to see if it indeed answers their questions. But there’s an important next step, especially if you’re a larger organization. You must work cross-silos to make sure different departments are not having contradictory conversations with the same customers. You also have to ensure that all the information on your site is current. If one department updates data, they all must still agree!

Spool, Jared M. and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Interviews>Web Design>Personas

Erskine Design Redesign

In just two years, Erskine Design grew from two people working at home into a full-fledged agency of eight, working with some major clients. Our website needed to better reflect our achievements, abilities, team strengths, and to get better information from client inquiries to help grow the business. I’ll explore our thought processes and share the decisions we made as our own client.

Collison, Simon. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Interviews>Web Design

Information Overload: Conversation with Ricardo Amigo

Dealing with information overload can be a huge stressor in life. Not only trying to keep up with the constant deluge of information that comes at you daily, but also managing that information in an organized way — so that you can find and implement it — can put your sanity in question. In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator in Costa Rica, about different ways to manage information overload.

Johnson, Tom H. and Ricardo Amigo. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Interviews>Project Management>Information Design

Random Thoughts on the Future of Web Design

I recently sat down with Chris Coyier from css-tricks.com for a hard hitting investigative in your face user interface interview, unfortunately I don’t know how to write (I just press a bunch of keys on the keyboard and hope for the best) much less write stuff like that so I just winged it.

Noble, Jeff. User Interface Trends (2009). Articles>Interviews>Web Design

Intercom Q&A: Saul Carliner Answers Your Questions

Branding encompasses everything you do. If you participate in your STC chapter, for example, how does that promote your brand? If you write for a SIG or chapter newsletter or website, or some similar outlet--or give a presentation to one of those groups--how do these activities promote your brand?

Carliner, Saul. STC Notebook (2009). Articles>Interviews>TC

Leah Buley on How to Get a Good Design Faster

Leah Buley is an experience designer for Adaptive Path, and she will be running a Bootcamp at Web 2.0 Expo New York to teach others how they can more productively and efficiently work together to create great designs and better user experiences. Leah recently spoke to us about her approach and how designers can apply it to their own situations.

Pike, Kaitlin and Leah Buley. Web 2.0 Expo (2009). Articles>Interviews>User Experience