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Posts Tagged ‘design’
Check her out!
Here’s my interview for GirlStart, highlighting a technical communication career for the “Check her out!” section of their website. The toughest question for me was the last one! GirlStart is a non-profit based in Austin that empowers girls in math, science, and technology. I was pleased to be able to say what a great career information development is, and also reading the other interviews was an inspiration to me!
So, here goes.
Title:
Senior Technical Writer, blogger
Company:
Advanced Solutions International and JustWriteClick.com
What do you do and what are some of your job responsibilities?
I write online help, website information, and user manuals for software that people use to run associations, non-profit organizations, and faith-based organizations. Our software can conquer mailings, large events, fundraising, organize and retrieve member contact information, and handle magazine subscriptions just to name a few tasks that large organizations do for their members.
I have to learn new features of a product quickly, and analyze the tasks that our typical users want to accomplish with our software product. Technical writers are sometimes described as extremely fast learners who can also interview to get the information they need as well as a journalist. My job involves writing, interviewing, learning about users, checking the software for quality, helping improve the user experience with the product, and constantly checking the future horizon to ensure our deliverables match what our customers want.
I also write a blog about information development and design at Justwriteclick.com, and it has helped me learn so much and connect and collaborate with others in my chosen field. I started blogging for my former employer, BMC Software, and it opened doors and opportunity to me because it moved me to the edges of my comfort zones.
How did you find your current job?
I belong to a professional organization called the Society for Technical Communication, and networking through those affiliations has helped me find every single career-type job I’ve found so far. Professional networking and social networking are huge parts of job-hunting, especially for fulfilling, flexible work like the jobs I have found a passion for.
Did you learn any of your skills from school?
I’m a little unusual in that my path to technical writer started with an undergraduate degree in chemistry, where I learned a lot about scientific thinking and process. After reading the manuals in the analytic laboratory where I worked for a summer testing powder samples of infant formula, I decided to explore how those manuals were written. I discovered a master’s degree program in scientific and technical communication and learned a lot of my specific job and career skills there, but I have also had to continually educate myself and reach out to others to learn more skills, for both technical and design-oriented skills. I also read a lot - books or blogs, either one is highly useful and helpful to me. I attend presentations, conferences, and training classes as well.
What would you tell a girl that was interested in doing what you do?
Technical writing and information design are professions that a lot of women have found to be fulfilling and interesting, and for many reasons, women are prevalent in the profession. I’d encourage you to read as much as you can and practice writing because both are important skills for writing technical information. I also would encourage a sense of excitement and exploration with technology, whether it’s Webkins or a Nike+iPod running sensor.
What are some of your hobbies?
I enjoy running very much and while I’m not fast, I am consistent. I’m into running for the long term ever since I found the best running partner in a friend 30 years older than me. I also write for my blog as a hobby and explore the latest technology in social media and computers by talking to my friends and colleagues online. I read voraciously and have joined at least three book clubs in the last few years. I also enjoy kids and especially my own kids. I teach my son’s classes as often as they let me and love going on field trips, even if they’re just in the backyard with a flashlight or binoculars at night.
What is your favorite website?
My favorite website is bloglines.com because that’s where I store all my blog feeds to read, and reading is my absolute favorite pastime. Probably my favorite website to visit is dooce.com because she’s an excellent writer and her daughter and my firstborn son are nearly the same age, so much of what she writes about I’m living. Right now, I enjoy del.icio.us/annegentle because it’s where I’m bookmarking all my favorite places to read and savor later. To talk with friends and coworkers, I enjoy twitter.com and twemes.com.
If you could talk to you when you were 12 years old, what advice would you give yourself?
This is a tough question, I have to say. Don’t argue with others for the sport of it comes to mind first, because my wise sixth grade teacher wrote that in my yearbook. Secondly, you’re not fat! Looks don’t matter as much as you think, but perceptions of presence, actions, and words (written and spoken) do matter. Learn as much as you can from those more experienced than you, and learn how to listen really, really well.
DocTrain West 2008 - Bob Glushko, Document Engineering
Bob Glushko blogs at docordie.blogspot.com, great blog name and a fascinating presentation. I liked that he shared and described his semi-retirement as verbalizing his desire to be a beach bum to his wife, but his wife said, I still like my job and I want to work, so go get a job! He has been teaching at UC Berkley ever since. 
Building information supply chains - example of the E. Coli scare in lettuce in March 2007. Basically had to figure out how to track heads of lettuce, similar to tracking heads of people to avoid long lines at security in the airport. With enough data tracking - input and retrievability - you can make informed decisions.
Common themes of new information services - document exchange, patterns, similar to supply chains and distribution channels. There are hidden documents in business processes.
His “ah-ha” moment? he had always focused on the document, but with ordering on the web, his user experience is what really matters - did the business process work? Did the lobsters arrive dead or alive? Did his shipment get to him in time and was it the right order? You have to know the back-end, the time difference, the travel distance, the choreography and design of the pattern determines success and a happy user experience.
I’m reminded of the fact that there are 39 time zones in the world, and for collaboration across the world, we have to figure out the time zone difference relative to the person you want to collaborate with.
Bob offers an excellent analogy for wiki-based, community-collaborative content - a restaurant’s lines of visibility. At McDonalds, you have backstage production lines for food prep, at Benihana you have food prep as part of the entertainment right at your table (remeber that onion volcano so expertly prepared?) We should try to strategically determine where to draw our lines of visibility - what point of view do we wish to present to our users?
Ah, now he’s talking about a cooking school where the kitchen is the front stage for the cooks, and the back stage for the customers. A restaurant’s dining room is the front stage for the customers, but the back stage for the cooks. I’m reminded of a webpage I read where people proved that writing on a wiki actually helps you learn more about the tasks because you have to figure out your conceptual understanding of the task to write about it. If you allow more writing to happen next to the backstage when it’s the cooks in the kitchen, or the expert writers in the wiki, more beginners can learn by not observing or reading but by actually participating in the writing itself.
While you may have identified more with either the front end or back end design issues, you can choreograph the information experience for the user.
Here are Bob’s slides, also found on slideshare.net.
[slideshare id=384924&doc=doctrainglushko-1209742956786846-8&w=425]
Who else wants to be a technical communicator?
I have been reading many essays and articles lately about “where has technical writing gone” (including a nice reaction countering the manual-less existence Jared Spool perceives) and “woe is technical writing.” Okay, I made the last one up.
But all of this reading and other recent experiences has made me think about the core competency of writing and writing well. Avi commented in a previous post about how our (writers’) business case and value-add is that others don’t want to write or are not as good at it as we are. One conclusion is that we should know our core competency and stick to it.
But does sticking to writing as a core competency work in the age of self-publishing?
Others are asking and answering this question. I found the article “Is the Net Good for Writers?” a though-provoking piece. Especially this quote from Clay Shirky pretending to write in response to whether Herr Gutenberg’s new movable type is good for books and for scribes.
“In the same way that water is more vital than diamonds but diamonds are more expensive than water, the new abundance caused by the printing press will destroy many of the old professions tied to writing, even as it puts in place new opportunities as yet only dimly with us.”
It’s a long article, containing well-written and dense prose - which is exactly what some of the contributors say the Net doesn’t value. My takeaway is that your goals as a writer will dictate your reaction to the net’s value to writers. Is your goal to be paid, and paid well? Then the net might be watering down the market (supply and demand). If you goal is to make connections, then the net offers opportunity that might never have been available in the day of the printing press’s invention.
I also think of the US-based screenwriter’s guild threatening a strike because they are not getting paid every time someone views a Season 2 DVD of an entire season of shows, or downloads a show on iTunes and watches it on their train commute on their iPod video. The writers didn’t come up with the idea of watching a TV show on a handheld device. Their core competency is writing. And we all know deep down that the best shows are the well-written ones. So how can our profession learn from the screen writers guild? Learn that good, fast, high-quality writing is valuable. Learn that a voice and consistency is important, though subtle.
The Society for Technical Communication recently worked with the US Department of Labor to to update the job description for “technical communicator.” Susan Burton discusses it in her Intercom letter You May Already Be a Technical Communcator! Now I won’t jump into the STC forum discussion about this particular word choice, substituting communicator for writer, but it is part of what I’m trying to parse out for my own professional job description and also describe what I like to do and what I’m good at.
I’m also thinking about minimalism and how to achieve it with writing alone. I am beginning to think that it can’t be achieved with writing alone. You probably need a team including a designer and illustrator to communicate the minimal message, and probably an information architect. As Bill Gearhart says, the Lego documentation is a gold standard of minimalism. But there is so little writing that I wonder where my value add would be in trying to emulate this minimalism? I’m not a designer or illustrator. I need a team to support the writing value that I offer.
I think the title of this post could be “Who else wants to be a designer?” And the answer might be, “technical writers.”
