What If You Hosted a Web Site and Nobody Came?  

As a technical communicator you know how to create material for your audience, but how do you get your audience to read what you wrote? By integrating yourself into the everyday life of the organization, you’ll discover creative ways to get the information to the people and to get the people to the information. Transform yourself into a detective, a teacher and a public relations expert, and you’ll meet your company’s business needs while you expand your own professional horizons.

Dyen, Natalie Zellat. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Web Design

What Users Want from Electronic Performance Support: Results from Three Waves of Qualitative Data  

Quantitative data from user testing of three successive releases of a visual programming language demonstrated the limited value of several existing performance support systems. Qualitative data collected concurrently pointed to specific usability problems. Organization of help information was not clear to users, thereby hindering search. In addition, users could not act on help pages contained developer rather than user vocabulary and concepts.

Krull, Robert, Janet Friauf, Angela Eaton and Johel Brown-Grant. STC Proceedings (2002). Presentations>User Centered Design>EPSS

What's Happening: Theory and Research  

What will the 'document of the future' look like? What will be the new balance between text and other channels of communication?

Farkas, David K. STC Orange County (1998). Presentations>Information Design>Hypertext

Where is the Instruction in Online Help? Designing it Right the First Time  

One of the ironic things about online help systems is that they are very often not helpful and even increase the user's frustration and stress level. A consequence of this increased frustration sometimes results in the rejection of the software. One solution is to increase the effectiveness of online help systems by designing them from an instructional design perspective. Some of the things we can provide users include: imperative, task-focused procedures; graphic feedback; access to redundant instructions; links to tutorial practice; philosophical and conceptual explanations for “why” they are completing specific tasks.

Pratt, Jean A. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>Documentation>Instructional Design>Help

Windows Presentation Foundation Project - Basics of Working

The tutorial introduces the reader accustomed to working with the traditional graphic user interface in earlier versions of VB to Windows Presentation Foundation. Importantly, it introduces the reader to the XAML's declarative format and what it means in the design interface of VS 2008. WPF can do a great deal more than what is described in this article. The power of markup extensions such as declarative binding, dynamic resource, template binding and many others are not discussed. It is hoped that the reader will be up and running WPF projects based on his previous experience after reading this article.

Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. Packt (2008). Design>Presentations>Information Design>Microsoft Windows

Workshop: Information Design  

Information design is the process of organizing information and presenting it to the user in the most meaningful format.

Deshpande, Shashank. STC India (2003). Presentations>Information Design

Writing for Training  

With books and manuals, users decide what information 1. they want and when they will acquire it. With training materials, however the writer/instructional designer controls the flow of information and the way in which it is presented. To write training materials requires careful consideration of adult learning principles, the possibilities and limitations of presentation media and, for classroom training, the difference between written and spoken language. A training writer also needs to distill from complex concepts the main points that participants will remember after the training.

Urbick, Dolores. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Education>Instructional Design>Writing

XIA@UT: An Extreme Makeover  

A presentation about applying concepts from extreme programming (XP) to the IA redesign of a web site (=XIA).

Burkart, Jill, Don Turnbull, Amaris Vigil, Andrew Switzky, Diana Miranda and Leonard Liaw. IAsummit (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Programming

XML and Single Sourcing  

Single sourcing your information enables you to create materials for multiple media (paper, online), multiple types of documentation (user documentation, Help, training), multiple users and multiple products. XML is a new information format that supports the creation of single source materials. This session looks at how XML enables you to create single source materials, it is not an XML 'how to.'

Rockley, Ann and Steve Manning. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Information Design>Single Sourcing

XML Basics and FAQ  

The World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for all web technologies, describes XML as a “method for putting structured data in a text file” (See www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points.) That’s accurate, but doesn’t really describe what XML is. This session will attempt to cover the basics of what XML is and answer the questions most frequently asked by technical writers.

Manning, Steve. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Web Design>XML

XML Basics for Technical Communicators  

What is XML? Cross-platform, software and hardware independent tool for storing information. A subset of SGML. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served and processed on the Web in a way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.

Pujar, Amit. STC India (2003). Presentations>Information Design>TC>XML

XML Holds Potential to Transform Data Transport  

XML is a language for creating data-description languages.

Jorda, Craig. STC Four Lakes (2000). Presentations>Information Design>XML

Yahoo! Pattern Library

Erin Malone, Matt Leacock, and Chanel Wheeler presented their work creating a pattern library for Yahoo! at IA Summit 2005.

IxDA Resource Library (2005). Presentations>Information Design>Case Studies

"Yes, But Does it Scale?": Practical Considerations for Database-Driven Information Systems    

This paper explores the process of designing and implementing a database-driven system of online documentation, and putting it live on the web for customers to use. Using real-life examples, it discusses practical considerations for balancing performance, scalability, and reliability.

Russell, John. ACM SIGDOC (2001). Presentations>Information Design>Documentation

You and Me: Making Technical Communication Personal

Text of talk presented at the 48th International Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, Chicago, IL, May 2001. We are moving toward an audience of one. Beyond the great mass. Beyond niches, micromarkets, subgroups, demographic clusters. Communicating with one person at a time.

Price, Jonathan R. Communication Circle, The. Presentations>Information Design>Personalization

Your Dais Will Come  

Keep calm for presentations by taking a little PDF.

Thompson, Audrey. Adobe Magazine (1999). Presentations>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Color, Contrast and Design in News Design

An online guide that explains color theory and shows how to use it in design through examples and exercises.

Adam, Pegie Stark. Poynter Online (2007). Presentations>Communication>Graphic Design>Color

Exploiting Web Tools to Make HTML Documents Accessible

More accessible documents through authoring tool supports. Exploit mainstream tools for easier information retrieval and document manipulation.

Treviranus, Jutta and Jan Richards . University of Toronto (2004). Presentations>Web Design>Accessibility>Software

The Art of the Podcast

A PowerPoint of a presentation about podcasting, and the things to consider when planning to produce an audio podcast.

Johnson, Tom H. STC Proceedings (2008). Presentations>Web Design>Posters>Podcasting

Writing as an Asynchronous Conversation

Conversation is a theme that flows through all the work we do as technical communicators. Every use of your web site is a conversation started by a busy site visitor.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. STC Proceedings (2008). Presentations>Web Design>Writing>User Centered Design

Page Source Order and Accessibility

In this presentation, the authors report on a survey and testing with screen reader users designed to determine how the placement of navigation in the source order (before or after content) affects accessibility.

Hudson, Roger and Russ Weakley. OzeWAI (2005). Presentations>Web Design>Accessibility

Children Are Users Too  

The following is what has been collectively pulled-through as the main points from Ella Tallyn's and Jon Pettigrew's respective presentations. These points should serve as introductory guidelines for UCD with children.

Demming, GiGi. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Presentations>User Centered Design>Accessibility>Children

The Beauty and Business of CSS

Building designs with CSS is no longer a fringe activity practiced by standards geeks and early-adopters. Creative pioneers and highly skilled designers are bringing CSS to the mainstream. The explosion in popularity is ushering in a new wave of possibilities for web design. CSS provides greater design control, allows more flexibility, and enables sites to become attractive, accessible, and faster-loading, all at the same time.

Bowman, Douglas. Stop Design (2004). Presentations>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Pushing Your Limits (and Other Secrets of Designing with CSS)

What do you do when you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall? When it seems your creativity is limited by how much CSS you know how to beat into submission? How do you resist the temptation to give it all up and go back to tables? Why does it feel like the pros are constantly inventing new techniques each week, when you’re still struggling to keep up with the stuff you read about last year? Understanding how and where CSS fits into the design process is key to knowing how to push your own limits. Reviewing the principles of existing techniques — and learning why or how they came about — can extend your capabilities and help you gain confidence in solving future problems on your own.

Bowman, Douglas. Stop Design (2004). Presentations>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Metadata and XML: Improving the Findability of Information   

Information about objects on subjects - metadata describes objects. Purposes: Information management and discovery. Metadata enables content to be retreived, tracked, and assembled automatically.

Bogaards, Peter J. Tekom (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Metadata>XML