Robert Desprez Communications

DO YOU FIND THE STC VALUABLE?

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The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (STC) just isn’t that help­ful to me anymore.

I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, when I start­ed my career 13 years ago, I loved the orga­ni­za­tion. The Van­cou­ver chap­ter had month­ly meet­ings, there were annu­al salary sur­veys pub­lished for Cana­di­ans, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sions abound­ed, and I reli­gious­ly read the organization’s pub­li­ca­tions. I even vol­un­teered as the vice-pres­i­dent of the local chapter.

So what hap­pened? How did I lose that “lov­ing feel­ing”? A few reasons:

The STC’s Cana­di­an salary sur­vey dis­ap­peared. A num­bers of years ago, the STC stopped pub­lish­ing a salary sur­vey for Cana­di­ans. It was a real dis­ap­point­ment. Now I’m left with hear­ing anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about mar­ket rates that seem to vary wild­ly. Some writ­ers appear will­ing to work for noth­ing while oth­er com­pa­nies freely want to pay more than the stan­dard rates. The salary sur­vey was a use­ful tool.

The local job bank is mediocre. In my expe­ri­ence, one of the valu­able rea­sons to become an STC mem­ber was that it pro­vid­ed access to the local job bank, which used to be a vibrant source of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. These days, there are still a smat­ter­ing of jobs list­ed in the local job bank but I’ve found that free web sites such as http://www.indeed.ca to be more helpful.

The STC is no longer the defin­i­tive voice of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Years ago, the STC was the main pur­vey­or of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion knowl­edge. I used to avid­ly read the organization’s Inter­com and Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion mag­a­zines. Per­haps the STC’s posi­tion of author­i­ty began to wane when Web 2.0 emerged. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers start­ed writ­ing blogs and many of these blogs, like Tom Johnson’s http://idratherbewriting.com/, offer valu­able infor­ma­tion to tech­ni­cal writ­ers much faster than the STC ever could. And they’re free.

To sum­ma­rize, the STC is prob­a­bly still use­ful to new­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers. But if you have a pass­ing knowl­edge of some of the lead­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing blogs (here’s a list of influ­en­tial tech­ni­cal writ­ing blog­gers), and you under­stand where and how to look for work and how much to charge, the STC may not be that use­ful to you either.

NOTE: This blog entry might sound like a crit­i­cism of the STC’s vol­un­teers and mem­bers. That’s not my intention—I think there are many tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to be involved with the STC. As I not­ed, I vol­un­teered with the chap­ter for many years.

GOOD PRACTICES FOR CREATING ONLINE HELP FOR MOBILE DEVICES

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I believe that tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to think more and more about cre­at­ing online help for mobile devices as smart­phone sales sky­rock­et. Accord­ing to the Pew Research ser­vice, mobile devices will be the pri­ma­ry con­nec­tion tool to the Inter­net for most peo­ple by 2020.

With that in mind, I’ve start­ed read­ing more about cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile appli­ca­tions. Joe Welinske, the pres­i­dent of Writ­er­sUA, recent­ly wrote a series of webi­na­rs about mobile user assis­tance. I pur­chased the first webi­nar titled “UA in Mobile Plat­forms.” In it Welinske writes, “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing I have learned in my work with mobile apps is that bring­ing over Help designs from desk­top appli­ca­tions is a real­ly bad idea.”

So what are some good prac­tices for cre­at­ing help on mobile appli­ca­tions? As I am just learn­ing about the sub­ject myself, here are some rec­om­men­da­tions that I’ve gleaned. One real­ly good arti­cle on the sub­ject is “A User-Cen­tered Approach to Web Design For Mobile Devices” by Lyn­don Cere­jo. Here are some of Cerejo’s and Welinske’s rec­om­men­da­tions that can be applied to help:

Design for a small screen size

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is not one stan­dard screen size (this reminds me of the brows­er wars from years ago). To com­pli­cate mat­ters, some phones can change ori­en­ta­tion and users expect the web site to resize accordingly.

Simplify navigation

  • Reduce the num­ber of cat­e­gories and lev­els of nav­i­ga­tion, and rearrange con­tent based on pri­or­i­ty, pre­sent­ing the most impor­tant cat­e­gories first.
  • Use clear, con­cise and con­sis­tent labels for nav­i­ga­tion across the site.
  • When design­ing for touch, make sure the tap size (width or height) for the nav­i­ga­tion item is at least 30 pixels.
  • Bread­crumbs are usu­al­ly not used on mobile sites since nav­i­ga­tion is not usu­al­ly so deep that users need a trail back.
  • Make links obvi­ous, and pro­vide clear and imme­di­ate visu­al feed­back to show the select­ed link.
  • Be suc­cinct because of the small screen size.
  • Use short and descrip­tive titles for your pages.
  • If you must include scrolling, scroll in only one direc­tion. Most mobile sites scroll vertically.

Design for intermittent connectivity

Cell phone com­pa­nies are offer­ing faster net­works but it doesn’t mean the ser­vice is always avail­able. And not all users have unlim­it­ed data plans. So make sure that pages can be loaded quick­ly on a mobile device, and that images are rel­a­tive­ly small.

Search and indexes

Welinske believes index­ing and search tech­niques are of less use in mobile appli­ca­tions. “If a user needs to search for Help con­tent, then the user assis­tance is far too large.”

Design for a distracted user

Cere­jo argues that you can­not con­trol where cus­tomers will use the phone or even how it will be used. Here’s a quote from his arti­cle: “Pic­ture a mobile user try­ing to find direc­tions using a tiny phone with inter­mit­tent con­nec­tiv­i­ty, while strap hang­ing and sway­ing in a sub­way train with sub-opti­mal light­ing con­di­tions, deaf­ened by the screech­ing of wheels on tracks — that gives you some con­text of use. Sim­ply put, con­text is about the envi­ron­ment and con­di­tions of usage, includ­ing dis­trac­tions, mul­ti­task­ing, motion, light­ing con­di­tions and poor connectivity.”

Summary

In the next decade, most peo­ple will be using their cell phones to con­nect to the Inter­net. If this pre­dic­tion holds true, tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to mas­ter deliv­er­ing help on smart­phones too. It will be an excit­ing and chal­leng­ing ride.

AMAZING TED TALK HIGHLIGHTS THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL BOOKS

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In a recent blog post, I wrote some of my thoughts on how I think tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion may change in the next 10 years. Based on the num­ber of com­ments post­ed, it seemed to gen­er­ate a lot of interest.

On a relat­ed note, I recent­ly vis­it­ed www.mytechcomm.org for the first time. One of the dis­cus­sion top­ics includ­ed a link to an online video that’s avail­able on the TED con­fer­ence web site. In the video, soft­ware devel­op­er Mike Matas presents the first full-length inter­ac­tive book for the iPad.

In the dis­cus­sion group, some tech­ni­cal writ­ers argued that this could be the future of tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. In my opin­ion, I could see some of these tech­nolo­gies being employed. But I’d also haz­ard a guess that cre­at­ing these inter­ac­tive graph­ics is chal­leng­ing and prob­a­bly very time con­sum­ing. What do you think? Here’s the web site: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas.html

MOBILE PODCASTING FOR EMPLOYEES

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Microsoft employ­ees can use an “inter­nal YouTube” plat­form to cre­ate pod­casts, lis­ten to oth­er pod­casts that are cre­at­ed by fel­low employ­ees, and even rate and com­ment on the dig­i­tal files using Web 2.0 technology.

Three years ago, Microsoft launched Acad­e­my Mobile, which is now host­ing thou­sands of employ­ee-gen­er­at­ed pod­casts. The idea behind the plat­form is that any one of Microsoft’s 90,000 employ­ees can share exper­tise with each oth­er. Pao­lo Tosoli­ni, a social video con­sul­tant who launched the ini­tia­tive for Microsoft, was one of the speak­ers at the recent Writ­er­sUA conference.

Here are some of the highlights:

Employ­ees gen­er­ate the con­tent. Any Microsoft employ­ee can share exper­tise on a giv­en sub­ject and upload it to the secure plat­form. Employ­ees have cre­at­ed 19,000 pod­casts to date, there are 800 new uploads each month, and 90,000 down­loads on a month­ly basis.

Pod­cast­ing tools are sup­plied. Microsoft pro­vides each employ­ee with all the audio and video tools need­ed for free as long as the employ­ee agrees to cre­ate three pod­casts per month.

Rewards pro­gram. Each employ­ee earns “points” for each pod­cast pub­lished and addi­tion­al points when anoth­er employ­ee views it. Points can be used to redeem gifts.

Plat­form takes advan­tage of Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies. Acad­e­my Mobile is built on Microsoft Share­Point but the user inter­face looks dis­tinct from Microsoft’s oth­er cor­po­rate sites. Pao­lo referred to the site as an “inter­nal YouTube” site. Employ­ees can take advan­tage of Real­ly Sim­ple Syn­di­ca­tion (RSS), com­ments, and peer rat­ing of each podcast.

Employ­ees can down­load the pod­casts to a vari­ety of devices. Being Microsoft, you might expect that employ­ees would only be able to down­load con­tent to devices like Microsoft’s own Zune MP3 play­er. But Pao­lo not­ed that Acad­e­my Mobile con­vinced man­age­ment that pod­casts should be com­pat­i­ble with all sorts of devices—including iPhones—so that employ­ees can eas­i­ly lis­ten to the content.

Microsoft’s Acad­e­my Mobile appears to be one inno­v­a­tive way that orga­ni­za­tions can har­ness the exper­tise of their peo­ple. If I was dri­ving to work, I’d def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast and tak­ing advan­tage of Acad­e­my Mobile.

HOW WILL TECHNICAL WRITING CHANGE IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS

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How has tech­ni­cal writ­ing changed in the last 10 years? And how will it be dif­fer­ent in the com­ing years? I start­ed to think about these ques­tions when an old friend asked my opin­ion about how the tools and deliv­er­ables have changed since the late 1990s. She was work­ing as a tech­ni­cal writ­ing man­ag­er back then and is now con­sid­er­ing re-enter­ing the workforce.

I see two notable changes from 10 years ago:

XML author­ing. Of course, one of the main changes in the last 10 years is the wide­spread use of XML when author­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments. Two years ago, Scrip­to­ri­um Pub­lish­ing (http://www.scriptorium.com ) asked more than 600 tech­ni­cal writ­ers whether they write in XML. A major­i­ty of respon­dents were either already writ­ing in XML, imple­ment­ing it, plan­ning to use it, or were at least con­sid­er­ing it. Only 16 per­cent of those sur­veyed didn’t plan to imple­ment it. XML author­ing is not a fad. It’s here to stay.

Improved tools. I start­ed using FrameMak­er 6.0 in the late 1990s. Adobe just released ver­sion 10 in Jan­u­ary. Thank­ful­ly, author­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments has improved sig­nif­i­cant­ly. If you dis­trib­ute PDF doc­u­ments to sub­ject mat­ter experts who make edits in the PDFs, we can now import those edits back into the source files. No more tedious edit­ing. FrameMak­er and Robo­Help can sin­gle source. You can ask sub­ject mat­ter experts to review your files via “the cloud.”

How will tech­ni­cal writ­ing change again in the next 10 years? Here are some edu­cat­ed guesses:

We’ll all be prepar­ing our online help for mobile devices. Smart­phones and tablets are expect­ed to start out­selling com­put­ers in the near future. More and more peo­ple will be using these devices to work and will need tech­ni­cal assis­tance. I expect this is the next “big thing” for us.

Cloud com­put­ing may change how we per­form our jobs. Increas­ing­ly, we may be stor­ing our source files in the cloud, dis­trib­ut­ing tech­ni­cal drafts using the cloud, and even author­ing con­tent using cloud-based soft­ware. See my relat­ed post about cloud com­put­ing.

Social media will change how we com­mu­ni­cate. In my opin­ion, most tech­ni­cal writ­ers are not tak­ing advan­tage of tools like YouTube and Twit­ter. But in the com­ing years, more of us will under­stand how to mar­ry social media and tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. In the April edi­tion of Inter­com mag­a­zine, there’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle called “Under­stand­ing the Help 2.0 Rev­o­lu­tion.” It’s worth check­ing out: www.stc.org. The edi­tion is free too.

These are some of my ini­tial thoughts. How do you think tech­ni­cal writ­ing will change in the next decade?

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290