Symposium on Usability and Design in France in April 2025
Here’s a more detailed description of the symposium’s focus:
As technologies and cultures change, the contexts in which individuals access and use information continually shift in new and often unexpected ways. Accordingly, what constitutes both usable designs and usability is also in a matter of access and accessibility. Such factors also shape usability practices in the interconnected files of technical communication and localization. We therefore need to continually review, reflect on, and – if needed – revise our approaches to understanding usability, technical communication, and localization to effectively address access and accessibility. Such processes should include regular examinations of how each field influences and is influenced by the others in relation to addressing access and accessibility in local, regional, and global contexts.
You can submit a proposal to present here.
Although AI isn’t mentioned, in discussions about the future of technical communication I have with colleagues and other professionals, the consensus is that we’re at at a crossroads in tech comm, in which we’ll primarily be writing with machine consumption in mind and focused on the AI chat experience users have. In fact, one colleague argued that informational formats are evolving from websites to chat interfaces as the main way we get information. I have no idea if AI factors into this symposium, but it could. Topics about usability, accessibility, and design seem relevant to this trend.
You can learn more about the symposium here: https://usability-conference.unistra.fr/.
About 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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