How We Developed an Intranet: Using the Web to Inform Employees, Manage Projects, and Save Money  

Data General’s R&D organization had developed disparate web sites. It was hard to find relevant information and difficult to know what others were doing. We volunteered to create a unified web presence to solve these problems. Taking initiative while building consensus, we crafted a highly used and highly useful intranet. This paper describes how we did it. Our success allowed us to broaden our department’s scope and change its name from “Documentation” to “Documentation and Web Services.” Our experience shows that documentation departments are well suited to create and maintain intranets, and that documentation professionals have the skills to become content developers or information architects.

Harvey, Michael. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Web Design>Intranets>Case Studies

HTML Conversion Tools: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly  

The documentation conversion tool market is relatively new, but several vendors have established reputations in the market.

Laurent, J. Suzanna and Candie D. McKee. STC Orange County (1998). Presentations>Web Design>Software>HTML

Hypermedia Systems in the New Millennium  

This article revisits three past articles about the implications of hypermedia in the 21st century. Each August, the ACM Journal of Computer Documentation reprints a classic article, book chapter, or report along with several analytical commen- taries and a response by the author of the classic document. In this context, a 'classic' document means one that was published at least five years ago but is no longer in print. It also means one that raises issues of lasting importance to the profession.

Waite, Bob. ACM SIGDOC (2001). Presentations>Information Design>Hypertext

ICC Color Management for Print Production  

An introduction to device-independent solutions for color management.

International Color Consortium. Presentations>Graphic Design>Prepress

Implementing SGML in the Mainstream: The First Steps  

“SGML is too complex and too costly to implement widely. ” This criticism has often been leveled at the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Mainstream SGML, a new open architecture, challenges that view. Traditionally, implementation has required companies to invest heavily in training. Authors had to learn how to create documents using complex SGML syntax. This method was time-consuming and yielded a slow return on investment. The Mainstream approach to implementing SGML uses resources that already exist in a company. Mainstream SGML provides an alternative to costly, complex native SGML document management systems. This workshop shows you how you can use mainstream SGML to successfully implement SGML in your mainstream business and publishing processes.

Luoma, Ray N. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>Information Design>SGML

Improving Information Quality in Your Web Space: A Take Charge Approach  

With the arrival of the World Wide Web, traditional methods of controlling the quality ofpublished information have been overcome by a technology that allows almost anyone to create and publish information. With this new found freedom in publishing, the quality of information available to the public has decreased when measured by traditional publishing standards. Technical communicators must meet new challenges in monitoring and ensuring that information produced in their organizations and companies is of the highest quality. This paper discusses how the problem evolved and how taking ownership of information on the Web may solve it.

Colvin, Richard D. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>Web Design>Workplace

Incorporating Navigation Research into a Design Method  

A presentation about whether an underlying spatial metaphor aids information design usability.

Lombardi, Victor. Information Architecture Summit (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Usability

The Information Architecture of Everyday Things  

Information architecture is as old as human communication. Where there's information, there's architecture.

Garrett, Jesse James. JJG.net (2002). Presentations>Information Design

Information as Commodity: The State of Technical Communication in the New Millenium  

With the information revolution, technical communicators need to problematize the definition of information, re-evaluate our role in the information food chain as both information producers and consumers, and re-examine how and why we produce information.

Chu, Steve W. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>TC>Information Design

Information Design Considerations for Improving Situation Awareness in Complex Problem-Solving    

The conventional techniques for task analysis derive the basic tasks that make up user actions. However, in the complex-problem solving environment, attempts to describe step-by-step actions break down because no single route to a solution exists. Although individual tasks can be defined, task-analysis normally results in the tasks being divorced from context. However, to support complex problem-solving, the design must place the information within the situation context and allow users to develop and maintain situation awareness.

Albers, Michael J. ACM SIGDOC (1999). Presentations>User Centered Design>Usability

Information Design Exercises  

Study the target audience – who are your users? Identify various information elements. Study the user’s work flow. Layout the various information elements based on their characteristics. Highlight critical information. Think visually.

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

Information Design for Beginners  

Learning about information design begins with understanding its definitions and exploring its key disciplines: technical writing, design, and usability. Information designers seek to combine skills in these broad fields to make complex information easier to understand. Specialists in the different fields often work together as a team to produce complex products. Stephan Boyd Davis, who teaches at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, elaborates: “I take design to include fulfilling the practical needs of the intended users and incorporating an element of affect in the user’s experience, often pleasurable and including surprise, delight, satisfaction, and other responses.”

Taylor, Cheri W. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Information Design

Information Design for Web Sites Which Support Complex Decision Making  

Most web site designs tend to focus on optimizing for simple information retrieval, “Find the value of X.” Yet, in decision making, the user’s information needs are much greater. As a minimum, they must understand and compare the value of X with respect to Y. Of course, in a realistic situation, several values must be considered. The information design problems involved in effectively addressing complex decision making has not been adequately researched. This research examines web sites to determine which design factors support complex decision making. It also develops guidelines for designing web sites which support complex decision making.

Albers, Michael J. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Information Design>Web Design

Information Design Process  

Covers the stages in the information design process of: discovery, analysis, prototyping and review.

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

Information Design Progression  

The Information Design Progression will focus on exploring several diverse topics in the evolving field of information design, including graphic communication, design principles, usability, and information design in teams and in the community. The topics provide practical techniques, examples of information design in action, and useful information that can improve your own projects and skill set.

Taylor, Cheri W. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Information Design

An Information Make-Over for Performance Centered Design  

Technical communicators have long harbored a secret that we are reluctant to admit to outsiders: Users don’t like reading manuals. They do it only as a last resort. Even online help systems, which we originally hoped would be easier to use, have not met with great enthusiasm among users. It’s an all-too-common dilemma – there is a lot of information that could be explained, but users struggle along as best they can without it. Part of the problem has always been that users are reluctant to leave their work to seek information -- and rightly so. They have work to do and deadlines to meet. Even if your manual or online help contains a wealth of useful information, it takes them away from their work and interrupts their train of thought. If they do try to use it, the help window typically overlays the interface and adds its own set of navigation, resizing, and searching issues.

Battle, Lisa H. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Documentation>Information Design

Information Modeling for Single Sourcing  

Single sourcing involves identifying all information requirements up front, then developing them from a single source. Information is broken down into elements, which are reused wherever they are required. Information models identify to writers all the required elements, how to structure them, and how to reuse them. This paper describes the process of information modeling.

Kostur, Pamela and Ann Rockley. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Information Design>Single Sourcing

Insights on the Poster Preparation and Presentation Process    

Dissemination of research findings and effective clinical innovations is key to the growth and development of the nursing profession. Several avenues exist for the dissemination of information. One forum for communication that has gained increased recognition over the past decade is the poster presentation. Poster presentations are often a significant part of regional, national, and international nursing conferences. Although posters are frequently used to disseminate information to the nursing community, little is reported about actual poster presenters' experiences with preparation and presentation of their posters. The purpose of this article is to present insights derived from information shared by poster presenters regarding the poster preparation and presentation process. Such insights derived from the personal experiences of poster presenters may assist others to efficiently and effectively prepare and present scholarly posters that disseminate information to the nursing community.

Weaver Moore, Linda, Phyllis Augspurger, Margaret O'Brien King and Charlotte Proffitt. Applied Nursing Research (2001). Design>Presentations>Posters>Scientific Communication

Intercultural Research in Page Design and Layout for Asian/Pacific Audiences  

We, Fuji Xerox, implemented an intercultural survey in page design and layout of customer documents for business machines such as copy machines and printers. The research covered the main regions in Asia/Pacific: Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. We studied their preferences in printed colors, typography, page layout, and pictographs. The results show Asia/Pacific audiences share a lot of preferences in page design and layout, though there are some uniqueness in printed colors and pictographs. It also became clear American English is not a serious problem for people who are Queen’s English natives.

Ichimura, Mitsuyuki. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Web Design>Typography>Asia

Internet Library

There's a lot of bragging on the Internet about how big it is, how much information the Web has to offer. I ran across a discussion group posting a while back where the moderator announced that one of the search engines had indexed 9 billion words. I went to the University of California online catalog and did a quick calculation: 9 million titles x 300 pages x 500 words.

Coyle, Karen. Karen Coyle (1997). Presentations>Information Design>Accessibility

Involving Users Throughout The Information Development Process  

Testing documents for usability is critical, but we don’t always get to do it. Even when we do, too often, it’s too little, too late. What we really want are documents that we are fine-tuning in usability testing because they already meet users’ needs, match our users’ mental models, and fit with the way that our users work.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>User Centered Design>Usability

Keep It Simple

An IBM Ease of Use poster with the message Keep it Simple.

IBM (1999). Design>Presentations>Posters>Minimalism

Keeping Users Stuck to Your Site

Discusses the effect of drop-off and how usability initiatives reduced drop-off at Staples.com by 73%. This discussion begins with a definition of drop-off and moves into an explanation of the value of drop-off data. Then we delve into the correlation between drop-off and return on investment. Finally, we highlight two examples of Staples.com initiatives that were focused on reducing drop-off by using a systematic process of customer research and redesign.

Hynes, Colin. Human Factors International (2006). Presentations>Web Design>Usability

Learnability in Information Design    

Design of information used for technical communication of complex products should consider how learnable that information is, and strive to deliver materials that are inherently learnable.The speed of information interchange and the demands of the workplace and school curricula require increasingly minimalist approaches to the material that is made available. People are frustrated by long learning times, and new users of software tools demand rapid absorption of tool capabilities. In addition, many readers of technical information are people for whom English is not their native language.Methods and practices that worked in the period when people were willing to commit to hours of study to understand a topic, or days of practice to master a tool, no longer work in a world based on ?internet time.? To assist our understanding of these trends in learning, this paper addresses three key areas related to learnability: proposing a definition of learnability, showing where learnability and usability intersect, and providing a basis for learnability based on some attributes of human beings.

Haramundanis, Kathy. ACM SIGDOC (2001). Presentations>User Centered Design>Usability>Cognitive Psychology