http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/University_of_Washington-Seattle A listing of works published by University of Washington Seattle in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/University_of_Washington-Seattle http://tc.eserver.org/34148.html http://tc.eserver.org/34148.html Audio CAPTCHAs were introduced as an accessible alternative for those unable to use the more common visual CAPTCHAs, but anecdotal accounts have suggested that they may be more difficult to solve. This paper demonstrates in a large study of more than 150 participants that existing audio CAPTCHAs are clearly more difficult and time-consuming to complete as compared to visual CAPTCHAs for both blind and sighted users. In order to address this concern, we developed and evaluated a new interface for solving CAPTCHAs optimized for non-visual use that can be added in-place to existing audio CAPTCHAs. In a subsequent study, the optimized interface increased the success rate of blind participants by 59% on audio CAPTCHAs, illustrating a broadly applicable principle of accessible design: the most usable audio interfaces are often not direct translations of existing visual interfaces. http://tc.eserver.org/28319.html http://tc.eserver.org/28319.html This guide summarizes alternative resources relevant to people in Technical Communication. 'Alternative' refers to the unconventional types of resources on this list as well the diversity of topics that are covered -- none of these resources talk about 'technical communication.' http://tc.eserver.org/28287.html http://tc.eserver.org/28287.html The web site for a Master's level course on Usability Testing in the Technical Communication department at the University of Washington. http://tc.eserver.org/25483.html http://tc.eserver.org/25483.html This dissertation argues that Slashdot emerged from collaboration among a group that shares a cultural commitment to open discussion. This combination¡ªthe dedication to open discussion with the technology to facilitate mass interaction¡ª allows Slashdot to perform the larger function of linking social groups, voices, and ideas that would otherwise remain separated. http://tc.eserver.org/24055.html http://tc.eserver.org/24055.html The STC Research RFP Discussion Board was created using Epost, part of a University of Washington online toolkit. The discussion board is open to the public. http://tc.eserver.org/23623.html http://tc.eserver.org/23623.html Explains how electronic portfolios bring together all the assignments in a TC core course, including learning the tools supported by the profession, student assignments, design rationales, and students' reflections on the tools and their skills and abilities. http://tc.eserver.org/23514.html http://tc.eserver.org/23514.html It is advisable to be aware of the predominant conventions used on the Web. As Jakob Nielsen writes in the November 14, 1999 issue of his Alertbox, 'No website is seen in isolation: users come to your site expecting things to work the same way they are already used to.' http://tc.eserver.org/23004.html http://tc.eserver.org/23004.html We encourage developers of web pages to consider the full spectrum of visitors to their sites. Listed below are some resources that may be helpful in creating pages that are accessible to everyone, including those who have disabilities. http://tc.eserver.org/23005.html http://tc.eserver.org/23005.html This video presentation shows how to make web pages accessible to people with disabilities. It is particularly useful for self-instruction or group training for people who design and support websites and/or teach web design classes. The accompanying publication provides details and resources on this topic. The presentation is open-captioned and audio-described to assure access to the content for viewers who are deaf or blind, respectively. http://tc.eserver.org/21951.html http://tc.eserver.org/21951.html This is an outline of Edward Tufte's pioneering work on the use of graphics to display quantitative information.  It mainly consists of text and ideas  taken from his three books on the subject along with some additional material of my own.  This page is in  text only format: in order to understand the concepts you need to read the books because the concepts cannot really be grasped without the illustrations, and current video monitor technology is too low in resolution to do them justice. His work has been described as 'a visual Strunk and White.' http://tc.eserver.org/20391.html http://tc.eserver.org/20391.html This report gives a brief overview of minimalism, a description of an Apple Computer documentation project, and a summary of my findings. It also provides some of my and my Apple colleagues' recommendations to improve both the user's experience and that of the instructional designers working to write Apple Help content. Through the course of this report, I will provide support for my hypotheses that (1) the current Apple Help model is not a minimalist help system, but that (2) users of most Apple software would not be well served by such a system anyway. http://tc.eserver.org/18653.html http://tc.eserver.org/18653.html While disjointed communication may characterize the communication that occurs between Arabs and westerners, technical communicators should work to resolve conflicts and avoid misunderstandings. http://tc.eserver.org/18655.html http://tc.eserver.org/18655.html Eliciting verbal reports from participants in usability studies is a commonly used method used to collect performance and preference data. By asking users to 'think-aloud,' usability practitioners can observe users interact with an interface and listen to their concurrent thoughts at the same time. Verbal data is helpful because it allows observers to know how users think—what they look for, how they expect to accomplish tasks, and what elements of the interface they find confusing or helpful. http://tc.eserver.org/18654.html http://tc.eserver.org/18654.html As electronic mail replaces face-to-face communication in many work environments, a thorough analysis of this evolving medium and its impact on communication is necessary. In many workplaces, telephone calls and knocks on doors have dramatically decreased in frequency, but the number of emails that circulate through one’s inbox is continuing to increase. Yet, our understanding of this new medium and how it is being used is limited. Some scholars argue that email has many of the characteristics of speech; some argue that it has the same characteristics as writing, while others argue that it is a completely new genre of communication. http://tc.eserver.org/18192.html http://tc.eserver.org/18192.html The EndNote cookbook is designed to help University of Washington students, staff and faculty with their EndNote questions. EndNote 4.0 is designed to: * create bibliographies (stand-alone or in papers) * store and manage a set of references * search publicly accessible bibliographic databases via the Internet, such as PubMed MEDLINE http://tc.eserver.org/14841.html http://tc.eserver.org/14841.html TC 437 is a project-oriented course in website design. Implementation is not emphasized. Students receive a grounding in rhetoric, hypertext theory, user interface design, graphic design, and project management as these apply to the Web. Students also study the societal and ethical contexts of the Web and Internet. http://tc.eserver.org/13906.html http://tc.eserver.org/13906.html This graduate course studies theoretical constructs and issues that inform all technical communication. Inherently a multi-disciplinary activity, tech comm draws on theories from fields as different as rhetoric and science, psychology and philosophy, sociology and linguistics. This term we will focus specifically on rhetoric, on the relationships between author, text and reader, and on philosophies of science and language. The purpose of this seminar is to explore relevant theories in sufficient depth and detail to do justice to their complexity, and, at the same time to examine their applicability to technical communication. Students will be expected to comprehend and challenge these theories on their own terms as well as to understand their value for the interpretation and transfer of technical information. Such understanding is crucial to intelligent decisions in professional practice; it allows the technical communicator to look beyond surface issues and see the essential problems and possible solutions. Theoretical knowledge of the field distinguishes the professional from the practitioner. http://tc.eserver.org/13727.html http://tc.eserver.org/13727.html Before our web sites can achieve their full potential, we need effective site design techniques. But while empirical research and tradition offer reliable guidelines for preparing print works, even the most fundamental web design questions remain open. http://tc.eserver.org/13651.html http://tc.eserver.org/13651.html The complexity of the intranet and the interrelationship between it and the organization’s overall environment mean that traditional methods for supporting company information technology and communication (in which geographically and administratively separate groups determined company standards and guidelines) may not be adequate for the new medium. Available resources are also inadequate; material for web 'authors' (writers, information architects, graphic artists, and programmers) usually focuses at the site level, and most academic and trade articles on intranets focus on the central internal home page or on aspects of the physical infrastructure. Resources covering the whole intranet generally focus on management issues—hiring staff, setting goals, overseeing the design process, selling ideas to upper management, and getting people to use the system once it is deployed. But support groups tasked with the everyday design and maintenance of the intranet also need to “manage” it—that is, to envision the intranet’s role in the overall communication and technological structure of the organization, design and maintain its architectural structure, and sustain it by ensuring its content is accurate, timely, useful, and usable. http://tc.eserver.org/13650.html http://tc.eserver.org/13650.html When science is represented in the news, articles can misrepresent uncertainty in one of two ways: either they make the science appear more uncertain than it is by focusing on controversy, or they make it appear more certain by focusing on the end result or the discovery. Paradoxically, the high degree of uncertainty that pervades the science covered in most news stories and that, in some cases, makes the science newsworthy, receives little attention. This is because journalists must reconcile the difference between uncertain science and an expectation that news is certain. Somewhere in the reconciliation, uncertainty often gets left out. http://tc.eserver.org/13641.html http://tc.eserver.org/13641.html This report examines some of the issues raised by multiuse publishing in the context of the Otobase software documentation project at the University of Washington. In doing so, it aims to contribute to our understanding of how single sourcing and content management might help us better adapt to users, and also to view the impact of a structured approach to documentation on writers and editors. The report will also use these ideas to suggest both current and long-term improvements for the Otobase project. First, it will briefly describe the project and its current documentation, and then look at theories of single sourcing, content management and structured documents before applying these theories to the project itself. http://tc.eserver.org/13642.html http://tc.eserver.org/13642.html While web technology has become pervasive, it might be argued that it has made few fundamental changes in the way we live. The graphical browser and the emergence of corporate entities brought the Web to the forefront of the Internet and brought the Web to the masses. But popularity, along with proprietary and corporate influence changed the goals and focus of online life. In many ways this change in goals resulted in the Internet failing to fulfill much of its initial promise. http://tc.eserver.org/13640.html http://tc.eserver.org/13640.html This project involved a comprehensive redesign of the Streaming Audio and Video site on EServer.org. The tasks included predesign planning (audience analysis, flowcharting, scoping the project), designing (creating layout, graphics, and information architecture), and implementing the necessary database and HTML code to execute the methods prescribed in the design. http://tc.eserver.org/13643.html http://tc.eserver.org/13643.html A largely uncharted issue in usability is the effect that a particular style of usability report has on the motivation of the team whose work the report addresses. Recent work in cognitive science and social psychology offers evidence of an intimate interconnection among thought, emotion and motivation, with implications for usability reports as well as other forms of technical communication. In this preliminary study, fifteen triads of adult workers arranged materials on a prototype Web site for forty-five minutes. They were then subjected to negative, positive-and-negative, or neutral feedback conditions. Measures for motivation were post-treatment time on task, as well as individual self-reports on attitudes. http://tc.eserver.org/13631.html http://tc.eserver.org/13631.html A website from an undergraduate course on designing complex interactive multmedia for technical communicators. http://tc.eserver.org/13630.html http://tc.eserver.org/13630.html A spring 2002 tech comm course on offset printing, paper and graphic design for technical communicators. http://tc.eserver.org/11921.html http://tc.eserver.org/11921.html This graduate course was taught in the Spring 2001 term in the MS program at the University of Washington. The students published four anthologies of papers resulting from their study of information architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/10004.html http://tc.eserver.org/10004.html This graduate course was taught in the Winter 2001 term in the evening MS program at the University of Washington. The students published five anthologies of papers resulting from their study of information architecture.