---
title: "Podcast: What Is the Technical Writer’s Role in Interface Design? Interview with Bogo Vatovec"
date: 2008-12-14
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2008/12/14/bogo-vatovec-technical-writers-role-with-design-podcast/
---
# Podcast: What Is the Technical Writer’s Role in Interface Design? Interview with Bogo Vatovec
**Listen here:**

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In this podcast, I interview Bogo Vatovec, an expert in change management, user experience, and knowledge engineering, about the technical writer's role in interface design. Specifically, we cover the following in the podcast:

- What the technical writer's role should be in the company

- Why the technical writer's skills are often "accepted but not respected"

- Why a technical writer needs to do more than just what he or she is told 

- What the technical writer's role is in relation to design and usability

- The importance of spinning your criticisms of prototypes in positive ways

- How early the technical writer should get involved with a project

- The semantics and implications of names ("technical writer" versus "information designer")

- How the role of an information designer differs from the role of a technical writer

- Why changing the name from "writer" to some other title isn't enough

- Why writing skills are a declining value

- What happens when writers do more