Mapping the Expanding Landscape of Usability: The Case of Distributed Education    

As the environments in which we use technology become more complex and more diverse, we need to extend and expand our notion of usability to include a broad spectrum of users and user activities. We take as an example the case of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's distributed education program for human-computer interaction (HCI). While HCI is the subject matter for the courses, the courses themselves present a challenging case study in HCI usability.

Grice, Roger A. and William Hart-Davidson. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Usability>Education>Online

The Measurement Of Readability: Useful Information For Communicators    

Discusses the application of readability principles and formulas. It is based upon the survey of the literature presented in succeeding chapters, and represents an interpretation of these data.

Klare, George R. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Design>Typography>Assessment>Formulas

Review: The Metaphysics of Information Quality: Comments on Producing Quality Technical Information    

The expressed promise in the title of Producing Quality Technical Information is that following its prescriptions will yield 'quality' technical information. This commentary asks what the term quality means here and whether the manual delivers on its promise. In other words, which of the several senses of quality is intended in the title, and the does the publication deliver as promised? That is, which of the major quality schemes corresponds to the rationale of the text: legalistic quality, in which quality is conformity to a long list of detailed regulations and specifications (as in ISO 9000); principle-based quality, in which quality is the result of working according to a small set of broad precepts; or mystical quality, in which quality is an indefinable property or spiritual construct, toward which virtuous people should aspire.

Weiss, Edmond H. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Quality>Assessment

Review: Nardi and O'Day's Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart    

Information. The word has become ubiquitous with the computer and the so-called revolution that has occurred as a result of this electronic gizmo so many of us use on a daily basis. We have linked the word with many other terms to describe how information functions in this new electronically-driven world: information technology, information management, information superhighway. Nardi and O’Day (1999), however, have hitched information to another term—--ecology--—that provides us with another way to think through what it means to work, learn, and play with and through the computer-mediated medium. As with any descriptor that has metaphoric possibilities, inventive minds can conjure a seemingly infinite number of ways to probe the expanded meanings that a metaphor can provide.

Johnson, Robert R. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design>Tropes

Notes Toward a Socially Informed Pedagogy for Computer Documentation    

This article extends Johnson-Eilola's main argument and then, using a thought experiment, examines an extended example of its implications. The experiment follows a student who learns how to produce technical communication artifacts following the philosophy that informs most technical communication classes and that leads to production of the functional but not conceptual systems Johnson-Eilola critiques. The article concludes by recommending changes in overall curricula and in individual courses that would better educate communicators to account for the social implications of their work

Selber, Stuart A. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Education>Documentation

Review: Our Little Help Machines and Their Invisibilities    

This paper examines the four kinds of invisibility Johnson-Eilola associates with minimalist help systems: fast information access that reduces user reflection and questioning, impersonal writing style that assumes the Shannon-Weaver communication model, narrow scope that leads to training but not teaching, and interface designs that oversimplify user tasks. For each of the four, the paper questions Johnson-Eilola's conclusions. Ultimately, the problems with truncated online help systems may disappear, as help systems are increasingly linking to the web, where adequate conceptual information is often supplied and opportunities for a social context for help are available.

Farkas, David K. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Documentation

Pages, Books, the Web, and Virtual Reality: A Response to Negroponte's "Books Without Pages"

Inclusion of Nicholas Negroponte's paper on 'Books Without Pages' (1979) in this Journal requires explanation, as the paper does not concern itself directly with computer documentation. However, the implications of its assertions and questions ultimately involve all of us who teach, practice, and learn about documenting computer programs. As we leave paper and move to other media to deliver our instructions to users, we are faced with the same questions that Negroponte was asking over 15 years ago. Just as the MIT researchers were doing, we look for new metaphors and new ways to define the relationship between our 'readers' and the information we are providing to them. We search for that perfect controlling metaphor that will clarify how our communications in new media work, and how we can apply some sense and some structure to them, a new 'grammar', if you will, for our books without pages.

Dicks, R. Stanley. Journal of Computer Documentation (1996). Articles>Publishing>Online

Planning and Information Foraging Theories and Their Value to the Novice Technical Communicator    

Two complementary cognitive theories help to explain how novice technical communicators learn effective search methods: information foraging theory, a model of information-seeking behavior that combines human-computer interaction with anthropological constructs; and strategic planning theory, a communication model of how humans plan and achieve social goals. The paper includes an extended example of how a new communicator might learn to use both models on the job.

Gattis, Lyn. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Communication>Planning

Planning and Information Foraging Theories: Social Implications and Extensions    

Information foraging theory and strategic planning theory can help technical communicators think about effective research methods. A broader understanding of social theory can complement Gattis's approach by adding considerations related to underlying ideological assumptions and to how research practices are situated in the larger contexts of organizations, communities, and cultures.

Jack, Jordynn. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Communication>Planning

Producing Quality Technical Information    

A book about how to produce well-constructed technical writing and illustration.

Dean, Morris. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Books>Writing>Technical Writing>Technical Illustration

Product, Process, and Profit: The Politics of Usability in a Software Venture    

In research and in practice,usability specialists commonly target the technology user-interfaces and help as the main arena for bringing about usability improvements. However, usability improvements depend on more than innovative and user-centered technical designs and implementations. Equally important for creating useful and usable software are the social and political forces that shape the development context. These forces give rise to leadership conflicts, factional disputes, renegade efforts, alliances and betrayals, all of which profoundly influence whether usability improvements will be supported and sustained within and across projects. This essay presents and analyzes a case history of a software start-up company in which usability achieved a Pyrrhic victory, triumphing only in the short run because of social and political forces.

Mirel, Barbara E. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Usability>Programming

Review: Quality Technical Information: Paving the Way for Usable Print and Web Interface Design    

Principles of information style and design have been around for years. Look at the shelf life of Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, published in 1959 and still a bestseller. Producing Quality Technical Information is a gem of a book, whose precise, bullet-style list of seven requirements and a checklist is now even more insightful in the fast-paced world of online information and the World-Wide Web. As a writer, I'm amazed how the IBM authors crystallized the essence of good information design in less than 100 pages. This commentary describes how the book's seven qualities and thirty individual requirements can easily and usefully be extrapolated to address key issues of interface design and usability for today's professional designers and developers.

Mandel, Theo. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>User Interface>Usability

Readability and Computer Documentation    

Traditional readability concerns are alive and well, but subsumed within several more recent documentation quality efforts. For example, concerns with interestingness and translatability for global markets, with audience analysis and task sufficiency, and with reader appropriateness of technical text all involve readability, but often in ways not easily measured by any formula.

Hargis, Gretchen. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Writing>Usability

Readability Formulas Have Even More Limitations Than Klare Discusses    

A literature review reveals many technical weaknesses of readability formulas (when compared to direct usability testing with typical readers): they were developed for children's school books, not adult technical documentation;they ignore between-reader differences and the effects of content, layout, and retrieval aids on text usefulness; they emphasize countable features at the expense of more subtle contributors to text comprehension.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Writing>Assessment>Formulas

Readability Formulas in the New Millennium: What's the Use?    

While readability formulas were intended as a quick benchmark for indexing readabilty, they are inherently unreliable: they depend on criterion (calibration) passages too short to reflect cohesiveness, too varied to support between-formula comparisons, and too text-oriented to account for the effects of lists, enumerated sequences,and tables on text comprehension. But readability formulas did spark decades of research on what comprehension really involoves.

Schriver, Karen A. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Writing>Assessment>Formulas

Readable Computer Documentation    

A retrospective look shows earlier advice still relevant to both predicting and producing readable writing. For prediction, refined readability formulas with stronger criterion passages and updated familiar -word lists have appeared, although the computerization of readability tests sometimes encourages misapplying or misinterpreting them when screening text. For production, attention to sentence construction, word characteristics, and information density remains relevant to both drafting and revising computer documentation for readability, especially since reading speed and reader preference often interact with comprehension in practical settings.

Klare, George R. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>Usability

SIGDOC Reminiscences    

By the time I stopped being President in 1993, the sense of computer documentation as a unified whole had ended. When one has such competent folks as Bill Horton writing entire books just on icons, you know that the days of single book coverage…or single SIG coverage were gone forever. Moreover, when the 20,000 member STC decides that it will focus on computers and writing, then the tiny 1200 member SIGDOC gets lost in the welter of talks, papers, presentations, and conventions. So it goes…

Brockmann, R. John. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Documentation>History

SIGDOC Reminiscences    

In the few short years that I have been connected with SIGDOC, the world of the technical communicator has changed quite a bit. These changes are visible in several major areas: in the work itself, in the technology and tools that the communicator uses, in the technologies about which they create information, in the work environment, and in the culture in which they operate.

Haramundanis, Kathy. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Documentation>History

SIGDOC Reminiscences    

In the mid 1970's, technical writers documented weapons of mass destruction for the military and its contractors. There were few computer-related jobs outside IBM and the other manufacturers. Corporate systems development managers did not know that people existed who were interested in such work.

Rigo, Joe. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration>History

SIGDOC Reminiscences    

Back in these ancient days SIGDOC was a very relaxed organisation full of personal opinion, and hominess. To give you the flavour of that far off time, I shall present this report as a personal anecdote rather than a proper technical document. Please forgive me, those of you with more formal and well balanced notions of history.

Patterson, Diana. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Documentation>History

Review: Some Reflections on the Emergence of a Profession    

Producing Quality Technical Information played a major role in the shift from product-oriented information to user-oriented information. It brought to a large community of technical communicators an awareness of the role that technical information should play: not a description of a technical product or process but, rather, a description of what people need to do to use the product or perform the process. This shift in focus -- from product to user -- led to many changes in our profession and in our professional careers. No longer mere documentors of what others had done, we emerged as professionals who added value and usability to the project on which we worked.

Grice, Roger A. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design

Two Approaches to Modularity: Comparing the STOP Approach with Structured Writing  

The first time I heard of the STOP paper was sometime in the mid 80's when the historian of technical writing, John Brockman, phoned me to ask if my Information Mapping method of structured writing derived from the STOP method. At the time I told Brockman that there was no direct relationship between our two approaches since I'd never read the paper. When the editor of this journal sent me the STOP document in preparation for writing this paper, I read it with delight. Although our two innovations date from the same period, the STOP authors and I were working in two completely different disciplines, cultures, organizations, and locations. These two approaches resulted in modularity - albeit of quite different kinds. The main purpose of this project is to compare and contrast these two approaches to modularity. I should note here that I approach this article principally as an exercise in historical comparison, rather than as an exposition of my current views, about which I will say a bit at the end of this article.

Horn, Robert E. Journal of Computer Documentation (1999). Articles>Information Design>Technical Writing>History

A Virtual Conversation on Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing    

A collection of responses to Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin.

Gaskill, David, Mary Been, Margaret N. Hundleby and Pete Praetorius. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Management>Scientific Communication>Technical Writing

We Neurotic Amateurs: A Commentary on Edmond H. Weiss's "Egoless Writing: Improving Quality by Replacing Artistic Impulse with Engineering Discipline"    

The assertion that technical communicators tend to be 'amateurs'--that is, lovers of our own work--is a claim with little foundation. Arguments toward regimentation and systematization of documentation writing are not calls to professionalize a currently-immature field, but rather attempts to emulate the hierarchy we have seen implemented in microprocessor engineering in the 1970s, software development in the 1980s, and content management in the 1990s. Such 'egoless' methods may offer advantages to employers, but should not necessarily be considered 'progress.'

Sauer, Geoffrey. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Content Management>Documentation