#14824
Bridges To Trust: Achieving Corporate Expectations within a Skeptical Environment 
Explains some of the tough challenges, novel approaches and successful procedures implemented at Leybold Inficon--actions that worked there, and may also be helpful to you in building a more tightly-coordinated technical communication function within your company.
Inch, Richard. STC Central New York (1999). Presentations>Workplace>Assessment
#19677
Buggy Whips, the Arch Deluxe, and Quality Improvement
Sometimes quality is not enough to ensure success. Do you know who made the world’s finest buggy whips? Neither do I. Doubtless the manufacturer continuously improved its product to a fare-thee-well, but once the automobile became popular, the market for buggy whips (to say nothing of the market for buggies) evaporated, and there was nothing to be done for it.
Jong, Steven F. Intercom (2003). Careers>TC>Assessment
#31499
Build More Effective International Media Analysis Programmes with Market Research Disciplines
Ask communication professionals why measurement is important, and their answers are likely to involve accountability, measures of effectiveness, ROI and planning support. Ask market researchers what makes for good measurement, and they are likely to respond that it involves reproducible results, adherence to rigorous standards and objective impartiality. Within the communication process, however—especially within PR and media relations—there is a tendency to look more closely at the output of their programmes than at the methodology yielding the data charts and reports. While market research has a well-established body of theory to support its claims of delivering objective and authoritative data, media analysis as a commercial discipline is only just beginning to grasp the importance of these standards.
Stoeckle, Thomas and Mike Daniels. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Assessment
#31414
Buttress Your Benchmarking Efforts
A smart company understands that a favorable reputation improves its bottom line. From a PR perspective, a strong reputation acts as good will, giving you the benefit of the doubt with both journalists and the general public. To find out how strong your company's reputation is, it is helpful to compare it with the reputations of other companies, also known as benchmarking.
Merlin, Matthew. Business Communication World (2005). Articles>Management>Public Relations>Assessment
#23361
Calculate Web Page Display Speed
Calculates the size of a web page and estimates its download time at various connection rates. It also gives you recommendations on how to improve page display time.
IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>Assessment>Bandwidth
#29359
Calculating Documentation Cruft
It's easy to describe documentation cruft, and often easy to identify it once you see it, but it's hard to estimate how 'crufty' a document actually is. Furthermore, it's often hard to convince the creators of a document that 'their baby' isn't as beatiful as they believe it to be.
Ambler, Scott W. Dr. Dobb's (2007). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>Minimalism
#14389
Can’t Someone Tell Me How to Measure Quality?
Technical communication journals and conferences over the past decade have consistently covered the topic of quality, but much of this coverage has focused on defining quality in technical communication and describing models of quality for our field. Few have dared to declare a finite set of definitive metrics that could be used across our profession. This paper takes the bold (and yes, foolhardy) step of declaring a set of metrics that could be used universally to measure quality in technical documentation of commercial products. The author is fully aware that this will stir up controversy and dissent, but considers this her contribution to stimulating discussion of the area of specific quality metrics.
Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>Usability>Assessment
#18195
Career Assessment in Changing Times
It used to be the prospect of retirement that made us stop and think about who we are and how we want to spend the productive years ahead. Not any more. This kind of thinking and planning is critical for everyone today, given the dramatic changes taking place in the business world. As companies shed staff of all ages, we need to assess our own strengths and weaknesses and career options. This experienced panel talks abut reinventing yourself, overcoming obstacles - real and imagined, practical considerations for the part-time, home-based business and 'dream' career alternatives.
Jones, Sheila C., Roger A. Grice, William A. Mattingly and Coralyn K. McGregor. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>TC>Assessment
#18375
Characterization of Quack Theories
In this article, I will first list some evidential flaws and then discuss errors in relating evidence to theory. Of necessity, this is a short list that omits most such problems. It is largely biased by what I have seen in newsgroup discussions.
Turpin, Russell. University of Texas (1993). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory>Assessment
#10407
This article is intended to make Web designers more aware of the qualities of heuristics by presenting a framework for analyzing the characteristics of heuristics. The framework is meant to support Web designers in choosing among alternative heuristics. We hope that better knowledge of the backgrounds, potentials, and limitations of heuristics will contribute to the professional expertise in the field. Our second goal is to make those who develop and present heuristics more aware of the information their users need. Thus, we try to increase the usability of heuristics.
de Jong, Menno D.T. and Thea van der Geest. Technical Communication Online (2000). Design>Web Design>Assessment>Usability
#29143
In this article, the author demonstrates that the semiotic model proposed by Charles Morris enables us to optimize our understanding of technical communication practices and provides a good point of inquiry. To illustrate this point, the author exemplifies the semiotic approaches by scholars in technical communication and elaborates Morris's model through analyzing visual and verbal elements of technical communication brochures from semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. The discussion of semiotic approach reinforced by various examples illustrates that the semiotic model can be a tangible theoretical and practical tool to help students and practitioners study and analyze the use of visual and verbal elements in technical communication.
Fan, Jiang-Ping. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Document Design>Assessment>Semantic
#31554
A Checklist for Public Relations Practitioners When Considering Measurement or Evaluation Research
Read these 10 useful tips from Walter K. Lindenmann, Ph.D., an independent consultant specializing in public relations research, measurement and evaluation services.
Lindenmann, Walter K. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment
#31406
Choosing the Right Metrics to Benchmark
The assumption that financial analysts make is that low numbers on efficiency (communicators per employee, for example) would be better than high numbers. Unfortunately, that doesn't take into account that low-cost communication may have low impact on the bottom line. If your organization wants to track communication efficiency metrics, then I'd suggest tracking effectiveness measures as well.
Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (1999). Articles>Management>Communication>Assessment
#27375
This site is provided as a community service to everyone interested in looking for a means to manage web site content. Here you can discuss, rate, and compare the various systems available on the market today.
CMS Matrix. Resources>Content Management>Software>Assessment
#30399
There is no question that feedback from customers is a vital input to any information-development process. To try to develop good and useful information without knowing how customers use (or intend to use) it is to work in a vacuum. To produce and deliver information and to ignore the follow-up activity of checking customers use of and satisfaction with the information is nothing less than gross negligence.
Grice, Roger A. and Lenore S. Ridgway. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>User Centered Design>Assessment>Surveys
#20085
College Curriculum and the Assessment of Recent Graduates
Technical communicators and academics share an interest in higher education program assessment because the quality offiture employees is at stake. If universities fail to adequately educate, on-the-job training must pick up the slack. This paper describes Michigan Tech's efforts to learn what skills their recent graduates use, and where they learned these skills.
Jobst, Jack W. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>TC>Assessment
#25037
College Writing Assessment: Online Community and Resources
College Writing Assessment is a website containing research and information on the evolving field of teaching of technical communication at the college level. It will include the results of our yearly assessments at New Jersey Institute of Technology, changing technical communication criteria, and our collaborations with other institutions.
New Jersey Institute of Technology (2005). Resources>Education>Assessment>Technical Writing
#27734
The Communication Quality of Kuriiri Project 
The aim of this research is to investigate the communication quality of employees working in Keski-Suomen Yhteisöjen Tuki (KYT), the Supporting Association for Third Sector Organisations in Central Finland, which were involved in the national project Kuriiri and in the transnational project 4Work. Specifically it will be considered communication quality as indicator of functionality and efficiency of such group. The reasons of this investigation are related to the future developments of this project and its need for a better communication and functionality. Essential basis for this analysis comes from my questionnaire which were sent in summer 2004 to those people who were in 2002-2004 collaborating at the 4Work Transnational Partnership.
Valentini, Chiara. Chiara Valentini Communication Management (2005). Articles>Communication>Assessment>Scandinavia
#18917
Companies Turn to Grades, and Employees Go to Court 
An increasingly popular technique for evaluating employees is prompting lawsuits charging discrimination at three big companies. At issue is the ranking of managers, professionals and sometimes lower-level employees from best to worst, or grading them on a bell curve, and then using that ranking to help determine pay and sometimes whether to fire someone.
Abelson, Reed. New York Times, The (2001). Careers>Collaboration>Assessment
#23585
Comparative Assessment of Document Usability With Writing Quality Measures
Measures of writing quality were developed on the basis of research findings on reading, writing, and cognition. From among the over twenty measures developed by the quality project, this paper illustrates theoretical and methodological issues for two kinds of measures: agents of action in sentences and task-oriented headings. When applied to a sample set of documents, these measures showed the writing to be inconsistent in style among the documents and only partly in conformance with suggestions derived from research. Though technical communication writing guidelines may be well thought out and grounded in years of practice, to have credibility in the new quality environment, writing guidelines need to be supported by testing. This paper discusses the development and testing of document quality measures that can be used as the basis of writing guidelines. The measures were tested both by using them to score technical documents, which will be discussed here, and laboratory testing with document users, which will not be discussed in this paper.
Krull, Robert. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Assessment
#13074
Comparative Usability Evaluation: CUE
CUE-1 is a comparative usability test of a Windows calendar program (Task Timer for Windows, version 2) carried out by four professional teams. The results were published at UPA98 in Washington DC in June 1998. CUE-2 is a comparative usability test of the popular www.hotmail.com web-site. Nine teams have simultaneously usability tested this web-site.
Dialog Design (1998). Articles>Usability>Assessment
#29166
Comparative User-Focused Evaluation of User Guides: A Case Study 
A comparative evaluation of two user guides,--the document traditionally used by a company and a model document designed on the basis of research results and recommendations,--was carried out using a number of complementary approaches focusing on the user. The quality and suitability of these documents for the target audience were assessed in terms of content, structure, presence of certain organizational devices (such as headings) and pictures included. The results revealed that the model document was more attractive, more efficient, and better adapted to users' needs, thanks to its modular organization (being structured according to "functions"), a large number of pictures, the presence of headings, and rationalization of the vocabulary used.
Ganier, Franck. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>User Centered Design
#30402
Comparing Assessment Techniques
In just the last few years, we have begun to see research studies comparing usability testing to other techniques for assessing usability. In general, usability testing has found more of the most serious usability problems and fewer of the least serious problems than other methods. Heuristic evaluation--having people evaluate the interface either from their own expertise or from a set of guidelines--has achieved mixed results. Although usability testing seems expensive compared to other methods, it may be less expensive when considered on the basis of 'cost per problem that needs to be fixed.'
Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Usability>Testing>Assessment
#31783
Comparing Powerpoint Experts' and University Students' Opinions About PowerPoint Presentations
Technical communication instructors want to help students, as well as professionals, design effective PowerPoint presentations. Toward this end, I compare the advice of academic and industry experts about effective PowerPoint presentation design to survey responses from university students about slide text, visual elements, animations, and other issues related to PowerPoint presentation design and delivery. Based on this comparison, I suggest some topics, such as PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view, that technical communication instructors and other presentation instructors might address when they cover presentations in their classes or seminars.
Mackiewicz, Jo M. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Presentations>Assessment>Microsoft PowerPoint
#27544
A Comparison of Two Evaluation Techniques for Technical Documentation
This study compared two evaluation techniques, Usability Testing and Cognitive Walkthrough, in their ability to identify errors in aviation maintenance documentation. The techniques were evaluated to see how much unique information they each produced as well as the type of errors identified. Results showed that the techniques were complementary in their findings and both are recommended in the development of technical documentation.
Rogers, Bonnie Lida, Chris Hamblin and Alex Chaparro. Usability News (2005). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>Usability
