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STC Conference: Whitney Quesenbery on the Five E's of Usability

by Tom Johnson on May 19, 2007
categories: technical-writing

{: .note} Unfortunately, I lost this audio file during a site migration.

Whitney is one of the authors of Content and Complexity: Information Design in Technical Communication. Whitney explains the five E's — a simple way to talk about product usability. The five E's are efficient, effective, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn. She elaborates on what it means for a product to be engaging/satisfying. Whitney also explains the importance of personas, which she has written about in the Personas Lifecycle by Tamara Adline and John Pruit. Whitney says stories are essential to personas. Visit Whitney's site here for more info on herself and the 5 E's: http://wqusability.com/

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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