Capturing the Usability Chimera: Practical Applications of Usability Testing  

How do I effectively include usability as a part of developing online and printed documentation?

Holmes, Fredrick and Melissa Wallentine. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Usability>Testing>Documentation

The Care and Feeding of Teams: Strategies for Team Leaders  

Teams, like individuals, go through various developmental stages. Understanding these stages enables a team leader to know if the team is developing normally. Although the team leader’s role and level of involvement vary from stage to stage, there are strategies that the leader can use to spur the team’s growth at each stage.

Hansen, Lauren Y. and Susan M. J. Lester. STC Proceedings (1999). Careers>Management>Collaboration

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

Career Coach Offers Survival Skills for Challenging Times

Condon encourages people to search for networking opportunities. She suggests reading the technology section of The Oregonian on Mondays to find out about meetings of professional groups in addition to STC. She said she often attends events simply because the announced speaker sounds intriguing. She visits meetings of Rotary clubs, Lions, and environmental organizations. She finds out what groups her friends and neighbors belong to and asks if she can attend a meeting with them. When she goes, she doesn't attempt to meet everyone, she just tries to make two or three new contacts. She exchanges business cards, and then, the next day, she follows up with a handwritten note to one or two people saying what a pleasure it was to meet them.

Riley, Erin. STC Williamette Valley (2002). Careers>Advice

A Career in Technical Communication: What's in It for You?  

Who wrote the installation manual for your car stereo? Who created the brochure to market your cell phone? Who designed the help menu on your favorite word processor? Highly skilled professionals called "technical communicators" produce all of these items. What does a career in technical communication have to offer? Here are some things you can count on.

STC. Careers>TC

Career Options for Technical Communicators in a Restructured World  

In a booming economy, promotions and advancement 'up the career ladder' seemed like reasonable expectations for capable technical communicators. But in the new downsized business environment a new career pat tern is emerging called the portfolio career. In a portfolio career, a person develops a range of skills and applies them in a series of jobs or assignments or responsibilities. Technical communicators are in a unique position to take advantage of this new trend in the workplace because they often possess a wide range of transferable skills and have a good overview of the company's product line and business processes.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>TC>Workplace

Career Paths Less Taken  

For many practitioners, technical communication can--and should--be the springboard for a different career. Many technical writers and editors have made transitions to related disciplines from which they can influence industry and academia. They now have titles such as marketing and web content writer, usability lab manager, product marketing manager, business operations strategist, and more. This paper summarizes the career evolutions of the author and several colleagues in technical communication, and provides advice to help readers broaden their career horizons.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. STC Proceedings (2004). Careers>TC>Usability>Marketing

Career Preservation in a Volatile and Competitive Work Market  

The ideas presented in this paper reflect my 25 years of observations and work experience, and recent period of unemployment in 2002. These ideas apply most appropriately to the software, high tech, and telecom industries, but could easily apply to other industries, academia, government, or non-profit organizations.

Emerson, Nathan F. STC Proceedings (2003). Careers>Unemployment>Planning

The Career Survey Scope, Design, and Implications for Training and Education  

How do technical writers develop professionally after they graduate from college? To find the answer we developed a technical communication career survey between March and July, 1992, and polled members of STC. This panel discusses career development theory, the results of our survey and the reactions of actual technical writers who completed the survey.

Philbin, Alice I. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>TC>Statistics

A Career Theory for Technical Communicators: How Career Theory Informs Training and Education  

Career theory should inform any individual or corporate needs analysis for professional development. A useful career theory for technical communicators is one developed just for them. For this reason we designed the multi-phase study. This discussion focuses on the definition of career theory and how existing career theory can inform technical communication training theory. The research design used to create our survey has evolved from the relevant literature on career planning and career management. The literature on career planning and management contains no career theory specific to technical communicators. Traditionally, training personnel have assumed that professional development, training, and to some degree, post-graduate education are determined by the employer’s needs. This is true particularly in cases of tuition assistance for expensive technical or graduate training.

Marie, Ann Ryan. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Education

Career Workshop: Participation Is Inspiration

Like most technical communicators in the current economic climate, I've been considering where I've been and where I'm going. On Saturday, January 12, I had the golden opportunity to do some of that in the company of some 50 like-minded participants and a number of inspirational and practical speakers. Not incidentally, I was reminded what a tremendous reservoir of volunteer spirit the Willamette Valley Chapter of the STC holds.

Cass, Richard. STC Williamette Valley (2002). Careers>Advice

Careful Scientific Writing: A Guide for the Nitpicker, the Novice, and the Nervous  

Writing scientific documentation has a unique set of caveats, pitfalls, and red flags that other types of writing do not have. The very nature of scientific writing demands the precise use of words and phrases, however, this precise usage is often discounted as being pedantic by many people. The reason for this precision is to communicate sometimes highly technical information to others who may, or may not, be as knowledgeable as the author, and who may, or may not, be a native speaker of the language in which the author is writing. To do this, accurate words and phrases must be used, especially in light of globalization and sciences that involve multiple disciplines.

Firestone, Elaine R. and Stanford B. Hooker. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Scientific Communication>Editing

Cascading Style Sheets Tutorial  

The Cascading Style Sheets standard returns some control of style to web authors. HTML describes only the structure of information. CSS, though incompletely implemented as yet, adds a style sheet where an author can specify fonts, colors, margins, alignments, indentations, and other elements for any HTML tag or class of tag. Our presentation demonstrates CSS, describes the CSS language, and surveys browser support for CSS to introduce this already-useful addition to HTML.

Jackson, Ken and Sonya E. Keene. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Web Design>CSS

Cascading Style Sheets Tutorial  

The Cascading Style Sheets standard returns some control of style to web authors. HTML describes only the structure of information. CSS, though incompletely implemented as yet, adds a style sheet where an author can specify fonts, colors, margins, alignments, indentations and other elements for any HTML tag or class of tag. An introduction to CSS shows the status of the CSS standard and various browser implementations, how to generate HTML and style sheets, the use of CSS compared to PDF, and the role of style sheets in HTML Help.

Jackson, Ken and Sonya E. Keene. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>Web Design>CSS

Cascading Stylesheets and Dynamic HTML  

Have you been frustrated by the limitations of HTML as you have struggled to present information attractively on a Web page? Have you used common work-around methods such as setting up complex tables for text layout and creating special text effects with a graphics package? Cascading Style Sheets offers a way to produce desired layout effects through HTML. If we are programmatically inclined, we can use Dynamic HTML to increase interactivity. We will demonstrate methods for using Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML to design Web pages and point out design limitations we still need to be aware of.

Randolph, Elaine F. and Jeff Randolph. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

The Case for "Technical Communicator"  

While we understand how BLS could have stuck with the term 'technical writing' for so long, it's time to change this policy. To that end, STC proposes that the Standard Occupational Classification 27-3042, Technical Writer be replaced with 27-3044, Technical Communicator.

Martin, Maurice and Richard O'Sullivan. STC (2007). Careers>TC

The Case for User-Centered Design  

The need for user-centered design in this era of rapid technological change is reviewed, and key ingredients of a user-centered design process are described: (1) involvement of users, structured by rigorous user input and feedback methodologies, (2) multidisciplinary teamwork, from developing the initial concepts and approach to evaluating and refining the product after its introduction in the marketplace, and (3) focus on competitiveness, on state-of-theart user interfaces and technology. Data supporting the economic value of user-centered design processes is also reviewed.

Soderston, Candace and Thyra L. Rauch. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>User Centered Design>Usability

The Case for Web Architecture: A Communication Process Approach to Retail Web Site Development  

How is commercial Web site development informed by management decisions, marketing needs, business requirements, and consumer behavior and psychology (in short, the complex rhetorical situation surrounding commercial Web site development)? And how can the development process inform the formulation of a more effective Web commerce solution? I argue that the sense of community on the Web is the building block of retail Web commerce. I use a case study to show that using a communication process model can be an effective method of assessing market needs, business requirements, management decisions, and technology in the development of a retail Web solution.

Chu, Steve W. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Rhetoric

Case Studies: Profiles of Two Technical Communicators  

Dr. Philbin and Dr. Ryan will first speak about creating and administering the survey and explain the reasons for conducting the survey. As husband and wife and as technical communicators, we will discuss our feelings about participating in the survey, working in the field, and our plans for the future. We encourage other technical communicators to examine their career goals as well. From the beginning, our relationship was linked to the technical communication field. We helped each other during our job interviewing processes and fortunately we both found jobs as Technical Communicators. While we have shared many of the same experiences, we have each experienced unique aspects of the profession. The discussion mainly focuses on the feelings, questions, plans, and expectations raised in the survey.

Theodore, Todd E. and Paulette R. Elsass. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>TC>Case Studies

A Case Study in Modular Documentation  

Modular documentation is a variation on single-sourcing methodology developed by Interim Technology Consulting in response to a client’s needs. Our client needed documentation on multiple formats that could be easily modified for multiple customers of their customized software package. The process of developing the modular methodology required considerations such as how to define, structure, and access the information modules in a way that worked for the current project and also provided a foundation for future projects. Interim Technology also wanted a methodology we could use for other clients.

Johnson, Melanie M. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Case Study: Implementing a Content Management System  

This paper presents a case study of implementing a content management system in a federal government setting. This case study may aid technical communicators who are interested in leveraging content management technology and who work for complex organizations or organizations with intricate communications requirements. Included in this paper is a detailed description of the background, approach, and early lessons learned for this implementation. The implementation was still in process at the due date of this paper. Additional lessons learned will be in the presentation's slide set and available from the Society for Technical Communication (STC) website at www.stc.org.

Pettit Jones, Colleen, Jane Mitchko and Marc Overcash. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies>Government

Cases in International Technical Communication  

Solve complex and real cases in international technical communication with your peers. Have fun, learn a lot, and meet interesting people while you’re at it!

Hoft, Nancy L. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>TC>International

Caterpillar Technical English and Automatic Machine Translation  

Caterpillar is developing an Automatic Machine Translation (AMT) system for translating product support literature into eleven languages. Source language authors write in Caterpillar Technical English (CTE) which uses a constrained English language domain and sophisticated spelling, lexical, grammar and disambiguation software. CTE tools are accessed through pull down menus in the author's text editor. Integrating the source language author into the translations process using CTE has allowed the development of the AMT system which completely eliminates the need for human post-editing of the translated service literature.

Gallup, Sharlene. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Language>Translation>Machine Translation

Caught in the Web: An Intranet Adventure  

As the World Wide Web rapidly evolves, as philosophies for designing online documents change, and as technologies grow ever more sophisticated the technical communicator is presented with many challenges. What are the most eflective methods for structuring, authoring and maintaining online documents? What are the best tools and formats to use for the construction of a documentation Web site? What kinds of technical decisions must the designer or writer make? HTML or PDF? GIF or JPEG? Can several text and graphics formats be combined into one seamless site? What about hypertext links - how many is too many? What is the best approach to building a prototype? Presenting it to users? Selling it to management? Many lessons can be learned before embarking on the journey. , .

Cluff, Susan C. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Web Design>Intranets