Strategies of Influence for Interaction Designers

Unless you have the power to make business and development decisions for your project, some of your energy will be spent influencing those that do. Experienced usability engineers or interaction designers may have limited skill in influence, despite how significantly it can effect their ability to contribute to projects. It’s the smartest and most effective designers that work to understand the human to human interaction within their project teams, as part of their work towards better human to computer interaction.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Interaction Design

Strategy with Design

What's changed in the last several years that gave designers a seat at the boardroom table and why do we have technology and information overload to thank for it?

Wroblewski, Luke. OK-Cancel (2006). Design>Web Design>Collaboration

Streamlining the Decision Cycle Through Collaborative Decision Management  

Over the last 20 years, management philosophy has shifted from 'command and control' to a more distributed and enabled management philosophy.

Frid, Randy and Randall Eckel. KMworld (2001). Articles>Management>Collaboration

A Structured Approach to Selling

High-value goods and services are not impulse purchases. Both the purchaser and vendor may need to invest significant time in the purchasing process. When I first started working for myself, I wasted much time. Now I make the process as efficient as possible, both for myself, and for enquirers.

Unwalla, Mike. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

Student Collaboration: The Ups and Downs of a Real Life Project  

Many people disagree on whether collaboration is an effective tool in the workplace. Pros and cons exist on either side of the argument. This paper does not attempt to solve the argument or to suggest that every situation calls for the same solution. Instead, it relates the ups and downs of a real life project and the valuable lessons those involved have learned.

Beheler, Tiffany M. and Jill Malar. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Subversion for Designers

There’s no question that developers need version control when working on an app. But what about designers? In this article Chris Nagele, founder of Beanstalk, talks about the benefits and basics of Subversion for designers.

Nagele, Chris. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Software

Success With Virtual Teams  

In an age of constantly changing technology, ServiceWare faced numerous challenges in attracting talented people and retaining valuable employees. Obstacles included the loss of information when an employee leaves, the cost of training a new employee, and a drop in production during the learning curve. By creating virtual teams, ServiceWare was able to increase its retention rate, boost morale, and increase production. The virtual team reality has produced stronger managers and more self-sufficient employees. The success of virtual teams emerged through creative problem solving and working together toward a goal.

DeCastro, Iris. STC Proceedings (2001). Careers>Workplace>Collaboration

Sustaining Communities of Practice in the Workplace: A Case Study  

The expanding definition of technical communication requires an organization with a multidisciplinary set of skills (ranging from editing to visual design to user interface design to usability testing to programming) to meet the new demands. While the members of such a multidisciplinary organization have common goals, they also have unique and specialized needs for education, communication, and shared practices based on their specific skills. Nurturing, developing, and sustaining these distinct skills requires an infrastructure that supports divergent communities of practice, yet still encourages cross-pollination of ideas and integration of processes toward a common goal.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Management>Workplace

Tag, You're It!

I was shocked today when I realized I hadn't ever written a post on tagging. At the ASTD TechKnowledge conference, when I explained Web 2.0 to a group, tagging was an integral part of the conversation. But tagging requires you to take a step back from the web, and consider how you think.

Lentz, Michelle. Write Technology (2007). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Collaboration

Talk to Me: Getting Feedback from Clients

Constructive feedback can help you feel more confident about your skills at a number of stages of your career. Whereas you might feel that you need client feedback more as a new freelancer than when you’re established, assessments of your work can also be valuable when you have moved to a new area, are working with a new client, are trying to break into a specialized field or type of publication, or want to negotiate for a better rate.

Wright, Cornelia Bland. Editorial Freelancers Association (1991). Careers>Freelance>Collaboration

Taming a Telecommuting Team  

“Telecommuting” includes situations where members of a group (department, team, other) are working in different locations, communicating with each other and with clients by phone, fax, and e-mail. The team may be dispersed through an urban area, nationally, or internationally. Telecommuting has advantages and disadvantages over the traditional centralized working group and presents new challenges to management and staff As a team leader of telecommuting technical writers on software development projects, I have dealt with many of these Issues. In this discussion I cover some of the advantages and disadvantages and some principles and rules of successful telecommuting teams.

Weber, Jean Hollis. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Management>Collaboration>Online

Task Analysis, User-Centered Design, and Group Decision Making  

Task analysis information is gathered from present and future customers within a clearly specified domain. Participants in the session are carefully selected to be representative of the target market. Information is gathered in a way to reduce the potential for bias. Participants provide information in their own words, group data in ways meaningful to them, prioritize tasks according to their business needs, and provide extensive detail on their most important tasks. By session end, there is group consensus defining the most important user tasks. And, through use of our meeting software, we have captured all the information for ready analysis.

Rauch, Thyra L., Candace Soderston and Rick LaRose. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>User Centered Design>Collaboration

Tasks and Operational Areas of Technical Illustrators

Technical illustrators are the link between the design engineer and the user. An illustrator is able to visualize technical issues in orientation to a specific target group and to prepare them for various media. This article will address how they do this, where their operational areas are, what tools they use, and what you can expect of a technical illustrator.

Kahl, Gabi. ITEDO Software (2002). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow>Technical Illustration

Teaching a Visual Subject and Facilitating Interaction  

This panel segment focuses on facilitating interactivity and teaching a visual subject matter in a distance (satellite) learning environment.

Keyes, Elizabeth. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric>Collaboration

Teaching and Practicing Teamwork in Industry and Academia  

The purpose of this paper is to help educators and trainers design realistic working environments for team writing assignments and, thus, to prepare students to function on high-performance teams in the workplace. This paper describes differences and similarities between academic and industrial team working environments. It focuses on the kinds of tasks teams are asked to perform, the time and other constraints under which teams operate, the types of considerations that go into selecting people to participate in a team, the members' expectations about teamwork, the rewards used to recognize effective teamwork, and the role of the manager or course instructor. This paper offers suggestions to address some of the key challenges.

Kleid, Naomi A. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Collaboration>Workplace

Teaching Online Workspace Collaboration  

This article provides a review and analysis of asynchronous chat sessions used by students to produce a collaborative formal proposal in an undergraduate technical communication service course at Bowling Green State University. The author/investigator reviewed archived chat sessions of the two most successful student groups and compared their experience to the conclusions drawn by a previous study on collaborative writing in the virtual classroom. The current study represents an initial exploratory attempt to replicate and/or refute the results of the prior study.

Edminster, Jude R. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Collaboration>Online

Teaching Students the Persuasive Message Through Small Group Activity    

Teaching students to write persuasive messages is a critical feature of any undergraduate business communications course. For the persuasive writing module in my course, students write a persuasive message on the basis of the four-part indirect pattern often used for sales or fund-raising messages. The course text I use identifies these four components by their rhetorical functions: gain attention, build interest, reduce resistance, and motivate action.

Creelman, Valerie. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Rhetoric>Collaboration

Teaching Students to Work Together  

Successful classroom collaboration requires teaching students about collaboration, having them read articles on collaboration, assigning project managers and guiding their management, and having all students evaluate and report on their teams and the collaborative experience.

Deming, Lynn H. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Teaching Technical Writing Through Student Peer-Evaluation    

Individual students in two different sections of an undergraduate civil engineering laboratory were tasked with preparing three professional-quality laboratory reports. The teaching assistant and/or instructor used established criteria to grade the first two reports prepared by students in one section. The first two reports prepared by students in the other section were peer evaluated by assigned fellow students within the same laboratory section using identical grading criteria. The peer evaluated section had a higher class average than the teaching assistant/instructor graded section on the fist two reports. The third report prepared by students from both sections was graded by a professional educator/architect without knowledge of a student's class section. The peer evaluation students also had a higher class average on the third report, suggesting that the peer evaluation process may have positively contributed to those students' writing skills.

Jensen, Wayne and Bruce Fischer. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Education>Technical Writing>Collaboration

A Team Approach to Training  

The new hire training program for Technical Communication staff at Battelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratories (BNW) consists of a team approach where several individuals have defined roles and responsibilities for ensuring that all new hires receive the information and support required to be successful in their positions. This paper describes our training program.

Edler, Sandra K. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Education>Instructional Design>Collaboration

The Team Approach to Writing Policies and Procedures  

Although many companies claim to have working teams within their corporate structure, it may be difficult to use the same approach for writing documentation. With the demands for controlled documentation to meet quality standards, involvement in policy/procedure writing is an important factor in developing a sense of ownership and commitment to maintaining a document control system. A team approach to writing procedures may involve more time, but the results are operations consensus, improved writing skills, and a boost of professional confidence.

Whitmer, Diane L. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Collaboration

Team Building and Group Dynamics

A collection of links to collaboration resources online.

Miesing, Paul. SUNY Albany (1997). Resources>Directories>Collaboration

The Team Interview Hiring Process  

In a team interview, several members of the publications team, as well as the hiring manager, interview each candidate. Each team member interviews the candidate individually, looking for a specific type of information. The interviewing team meets afterward to share information about the candidate. Although it takes more time, having each interviewer concentrate on one or two aspects of the candidate allows interview team, as a whole, to learn more about a candidate. This process, in turn, helps the manager to make better hiring decisions.

Billard, Trish. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>Interviewing>Collaboration