Month: April 2008

What do YOU do?

Reading time: 2 mins

Re-reading the article I submitted to the ISTC Communicator magazine, I realise that my average day isn’t:

  • particularly average at all
  • a true representation of everything I’m involved with

I lead a team of writers so my typical day may not apply to everyone, and I also have a tendency to stick my nose in and get involved in other areas if I feel I can be of help. Simply put, if I hear someone talking about “information” my radar pings and I see if I can be of any benefit.

Other non-typical items include collation of Product Release Notes, my team proof-read Marketing brochures and website collateral, we try and monitor consistency in the UI of our customer facing product, and I’m currently in the process of creating (and managing) and developer community website. As an “unbiased” member of the development group I also recently facilitated our retrospectives.

One of the reasons I love this profession is that you can (and should?) be involved in many different areas. We have a unique view of the product and I guess my day is sculpted by that, although it is helped that we are a small(ish) company and have a small group of people thinking about the “product” as a whole.

I’m lucky that our company doesn’t have a traditional structure, with everyone encouraged to talk to everyone else regardless of role or level. It’s a little like a zoo sometimes, with a lot of noise and activity, but apparently that’s a good thing. It does mean I am involved in discussions that can be hard to be a part of otherwise, chatting to the Product Manager, Product Marketing and Sales, all of whom are saying the same thing, which in itself proves that things are working and that technical writers are a valid part of that discussion.

I’m curious to hear if others have the same opportunity; What other areas, outside of technical writing, are you involved in? And why?

Don't panic

Reading time: < 1 min

Watching the news, watching the cars queue at the garages, sucking them dry.

Which is all fine aside from the fact that OUR tank is close to empty. The car computer reports we have 94 miles left, so let’s presume we can squeeze that to around 120 miles (at the very very most). Given that we put about 55-60 miles on the car each day for our daily commute (kill the planet!!) and… yeah, I’m a little concerned. I will be going out later to fill our tank.

And next time we buy a car, we’ll be getting a hybrid of some sort. Performance be damned (mark my words please, I’m quite serious about this and have been watching the developments Honda are making with keen interest). To be honest, if it was more affordable I’d consider converting our existing car.

We are completely reliant on having a car. It IS possible to get to my work on public transport but it would (presuming everything ran on time) take just short of two and a half hours. One way. I’d really rather not spend five hours of my day commuting, which is, of course, hugely selfish of me.

Perhaps we should move.

But we like it here. We like our little house and, besides, we can’t actually afford to move. Have you SEEN the house prices? I know what our house is (allegedly) worth and it is, quite frankly, mental. I certainly wouldn’t have paid over £100k for it. Mental.

But things seem to be changing, and I’d really rather be a little ahead of the game, and remove some of our reliance on oil sooner rather than later.

Recently Read

Reading time: 2 mins

Text Preferences Survey
What is the ideal text size to use on the web? What about line height and column (line) length? Most of the information in this area is based on print (at best) or anecdotal (at worst). A design agency in Brighton, Message, has decided to try and find out by carrying out a survey:

“Our goal is to publish a report that provides hard facts about what constitutes ‘readable’ text on the web … We see this report being of value not just to our clients and their customers but to web users at large.”

It only takes a few minutes to complete so go and take the survey.

Why software applications need product blogs and why they don’t get them
As well as having a very long title, Tom also hits on some points well worth considering if you are at all web savvy (and I’m presuming that, as you are reading this blog, you are). Most of his ideas are spot on but would require a lot of business process change, but I think they are worth picking up on:

I can think of six major ways product blogs can benefit users and project teams. Product blogs can …
– Provide a venue for product announcements
– Allow users to submit product bugs
– Allow users to submit feature requests
– Provide a roadmap preview for the product
– Enable a point of connection between users and project teams
– Provide a way to teach advanced tips to users

He also mentions something that I too have pondered, namely including RSS feeds in online help and somehow merging the two in a more dynamic way than before. Probably not much point in purusing that now but who knows what may happen in the future.

How to work better
A short list of simple, but powerful, advice which is applicable to everyone. Go on, there is at least one thing on that list that you could do better (or if you are like me, 3 or 4).

Subversion for writers
Entirely focussed on Mac OSX users, this has reminded me that we use Subversion at work and that I should really write up our process. Regardless of platform, the basic benefits of using a version control system can be realised with little cost.

What does it do? It manages multiple versions of a project in development. You check your project out of the repository, make changes and you commit those changes back to the repository. At any time you can view older versions of the whole project or of individual files, and revert to them, if the work done since was in error. You can make branches, which allows you to develop your work in two (or more) ways in parallel, and you can tag your project to say, at this point I met a certain milestone (eg: first draft, second draft, version sent to publisher X, version sent to publisher Y, published version, etc.)

Floored (plus other items of note)

Reading time: 2 mins

I’m lying on the bed, laptop perched on a tray, watching TV. It’s a little tricky to type because I’ve got a cut on the middle finger of my left hand, and my arms and hands are sore. Why? Laminate flooring.

Previously the laminate flooring ran from the hallway through to the kitchen, it’s a galley style kitchen so was the easiest way to get some cheap flooring down when we moved in. The new kitchen meant new flooring to compliment it which meant lifting and cutting the few boards that span the doorway. Not a simple job, as it turned out, particularly when you have a bad knee which is something I hadn’t really factored into the work. Meh.

However that’s the hall all done, and the kitchen floor shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll maybe tackle a little of it tonight, see how my knee is I guess.

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I’ll happily admit that I don’t really understand why a man would want to dress himself as a woman, but frankly I don’t really care, each to their own and all that. I’ve been reading Becky’s blog for a couple of years, and it’s been interesting to hear about her life, how she came about and how Simon lives his life.

So I was thrilled to read a well researched and thought out piece on Becky and Simon, which featured in the Norwich Evening News (another joy of the internet, who’d have thought I’d EVER link to a newspaper from Norwich). You can read Simon’s thoughts here.

It’s well worth a read.

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I occasionally link to Wikipedia. If there is an obscure topic that I think you might need some more info about then it’s a fairly reliable source (with the usual caveats of course). So, it’s interesting that Encyclopedia Britannica has opened access to bloggers, which I guess is a move to try and re-establish not only the Britannica brand, but it’s place as THE source of reliable information. However I think they might be too late…

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Contemplating upgrading our Sky system to HD. We’ve started watching movies again, started with some old favouries (Matrix, Face/Off and so on) and if the trend continues it’ll be worthwhile. Mind you, I might need to start saving up to get an iPhone if the much-rumoured new version is announced in June.

Time will tell.

Design matters

Reading time: < 1 min

Why would you choose to make something difficult to use? Are you deliberately putting barriers in the road? Or are you just forgetting the main reason why people pick up a document or manual?

Long ago, when I had just started out as a technical writer, I attended a course on designing for Print. It covered many things, from typography to layout and I still use some of the basic design rules I learned way back then.

Whitespace, choice of font, and hierarchical indentation can help make a document more readable. Clearly delineating the structure of a document without explicitly stating it as such, leaving visual clues to help the reader navigate the page (presuming you’ve covered the multiple navigation routes they’ll take to get to that page of information).

Such considerations will continue to become more important as more and more information is moved online, and is then available in a variety of media formats and devices. Structuring your content, and using visual clues to convey that structure clearly, will become ever more important.

At this point there starts to become an obvious overlap with usability, pushing technical writers to start thinking more in terms of the user experience than simple task analysis allows. Understanding the reasoning behind a user action will become equally important, and can be passed to development to influence the UI as well as directly impacting on how we present technical information in the future.

Beyond that I’m not sure where else this may take us but I do know that part of the reason I love this job is the cross-over we have with so many other professions/industries, and I can’t wait to see what is next over the horizon.

Modern Life is Rubbish

Reading time: 2 mins

Kitchen is almost finished. Last bit of tiling is getting done on Monday, most of the flooring will go down over the weekend, then it’s a couple of touch up jobs with a paintbrush, a little wallpaper and we’re done!!

I’ve sent off my letter of complaint and received a phone call following up to tell me they had received it and I will receive a written response soon. So that’s moving on nicely, and my altercation with a taxi is now in the hands of the Glasgow City Council licensing board.

Work has been increasingly busy these past couple of weeks, hence the paucity of updates here, it’s all I can do to stay awake long enough to eat dinner sometimes. It’s been great though, and I’m really starting to grow into the role (now that I’ve kind of figured out what my role is!). Plenty about that on my other blog mind you.

And speaking of blogs, I’ve been making a conscious effort to get back to commenting again. Yes it’s easy to say that you are still reading but sometimes that little comment counter can make a huge difference to your blogging mojo. It’s the little things that make a difference.

So, just got my health to sort out then we’ll have a semblance of order resorted (results of tests due tomorrow). I’ve almost completely eliminated “additional salt” from my diet, it’s taken a bit to get used to it but I certainly notice it when it’s been added. Hopefully that, plus the diuretic (bendroflumethiazide if you must know) will bring my blood pressure out of the stratosphere it was operating within (195/122 at highest reading… but down to 174/114 about 10 days ago).

I’ve also made a conscious effort to relax and de-stress, but truth be told I don’t feel any different, a little easier to tire since I started the pills but… yeah… not much has changed. Aside from my diet of course, which also means I’ve lost a little weight… things are heading the right way.

In other news, our cat is growing up. Looking back at photos from January he’s noticeably bigger and today he made his first kill!! A little baby starling. Shame really but we knew it would happen. Frankly I’m a little disappointed, it can’t have been much of a challenge so I’ve told him not to come back next time until he’s got one of the bloody magpies in his claws.

And that’s quite enough of that. As soon as I get the kitchen finished I’ll be starting a book clear-out, more on that… later.