This week was the first time I've actually seen our usability labs used. We have a new usability research group led by someone with years of experience doing usability engineering for Microsoft. I watched in our observation room as he led a handful of users through 60-90 minute usability tests for an application I documented. What is surprising about usability testing is how much valid information you can gather from so few subjects. With...
Shay Shaked The following is a guest post by Shay Shaked. I've been messing around with Google Plus for about two weeks now. It occurred to me, after reading Tom Johnson's latest post about content strategy and listening to his podcast about the same topic, that Google Plus is, perhaps unintentionally, the best professional social network with the right usage of content strategy. I'm not going to explain what Google Plus is in this post....
I received the following email from Anna, a literature PhD candidate who is considering changing career paths from teaching into technical writing. This is a collaborative post, so if you have advice to share, please add it in the comments below. 1. What is it like doing tech writing on a freelance basis? (My understanding is that you have a full-time, permanent position, but since you're so active in the community, I thought you might ha...
The many directions one can go I have a lot of flexibility and freedom in my job. That's part of the appeal. The other day I was reflecting on the best route to take, the most fruitful path I should follow. There are quite a few directions I could go. I could become meticulously detailed about style, knowing the ins and outs of every handbook (and being able to compare them with wit and perspective). I could become a tools guru in skinni...
Valeria Maltoni from Conversation Agent recently wrote about Groupon as an example of a business employing a strong copywriting strategy. Valeria writes, Great copywriting is the secret sauce of successful email newsletters. Groupon is an interesting example of promotional writing that sells, when attached to the right deals. (See Conversation Agent: How Content Seals the Deal at Groupon.) If you're unfamiliar with Groupon, it's a daily d...
A couple of months ago, I realized I would be playing a larger role in web publishing at my work, moving more towards a user awareness role. Realizing this direction, and knowing I had some budget, I decided I should attend Confab, the first conference on content strategy. It was sold out, but by a stroke of luck the organizer offered me one of thirteen tickets held in reserve. I never wrote much about the Confab conference. In part I was...
He mentioned this during one of our lazy afternoon meetings, which dragged on much longer than the scheduled time. The central problem of writing help, my colleague Derek explained, is how you make it so Joe user can find the answer to his one question among 50,000 other answers in the help. Every user seems to have the one or two questions he or she thinks should be at the top of the help file, he explained. A lot of users think a help f...
I told Avery tonight that I want to be a spy, and asked for her advice. I said it half jokingly, because it seems ridiculous, only an idea from watching too many spy movies on TV. Still, life as a technical writer is pretty boring. I want more. Avery said I probably am just interested in mystery and adventure. She noted that it would be hard to be a spy and also have a family, and she is certainly right about that. She pretty much said I can't...
I was talking with a colleague the other day about how to increase the number of hits per article on our organization's technology website. We get about 800 hits per article, which isn't much given the potential audience. To increase hits, I said we need to send these articles to all users via a newsletter. Email is the only way to reach a lot of people. People aren't subscribing to RSS anymore. On my own blog, I can't seem to go beyond 3...
For the past few weeks, I've been obsessed about building a technology blog for my organization. But this past week I had a sobering wake-up call that has made me rethink what types of content readers find valuable. It turns out, if you look at the metrics for the site, that the blog isn't hardly read at all. Instead, many people read the forums and help content. Really? Yes, I think in comparing content value, an informative set of help ...
In reading the Book of Mormon (children's edition) to Callie and Lucy, I noticed that both Lehi and Nephi prayed to received their revelations. I don't pray nearly enough. I usually wait until I'm tired and then say a 15 second prayer. I used to be much better at praying. On my mission I discovered that if I sang and prayed, sang another hymn and prayed, sang another hymn and prayed, until about 10 minutes, I could invoke the warmth of the spi...
I'm not sure entirely why, but corporate blogging can be quite difficult. On my professional blog, I can post several times a week in the spare moments of my days, sitting down for 30 minutes here or an hour there and have some substantial content to show for it. But at work, I can spin my wheels on full throttle for hours and only have 1 or 2 posts all week -- not really interesting ones -- to show for it. Why is that? One difference is ...
All my children are enamored with stories. If you're telling a good story, they will sit patiently for anything. I believe I could brush their teeth for a half hour as long as they were gripped by the story I was telling them. Tonight I told Callie stories about everything -- how I started the lawnmower, how I got my job in Egypt, how we decided to move to Utah. I told her how Avery was a baby when 9/11 happened, and what 9/11 was all about. I...
Recently I listened to Moira Gunn interview Steve Rosenbaum about content curation in her podcast, Tech Nation. I heard Steve present on a similar topic at Confab. Interestingly, I found the podcast, which was a conversation between Moira and Steve, more interesting, fluid, and natural than Steve's Confab presentation. Steve's presentation at Confab was great. But all presentations, by nature, have a different rhythm and organization than...
Ivan Walsh The following is a guest post by Ivan Walsh. I didn't get on a plane until I was 21. I'd grown up in a small town in the west of Ireland with the unfortunate moniker ‘Slash City'. Not the most exotic place in the world. So, when I did start to travel, I moved a lot. The reason I could do this was mostly due to the mobile nature of technical writing and the opportunities gave me to travel. For most of my twenties I went from o...
