radical revamping of techpubs

[Bill Swallow]

I'd say that those are additional skills. What I took Chris' remark to
mean is that writers should be there through the entire process,
involved with design, so not only do they influence the product design
along with the other stakeholders, but also have a means of thoroughly
planning the entire documentation effort as part of that product
development planning. Let's face it, most tech writers come at a
product from a different angle than an engineer or a tester. It may
not always be user focused, but it certainly is from a task-based
angle. "Is this thing going to be well thought out and therefore easy
to explain or is this going to be yet another 100 page install
procedure?"

On 10/18/07, Rene Stephenson <rinnie1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Human engineering, customer research prior to design concept, GUI concept
> and progression testing, usability testing, quality control, user advocacy,
> basic GUI verification and operability (short of rigorous software design
> testing)... the list goes on. There are a lot of areas where TWs could ply
> their skills, provided a corporation values something other than blind
> typists who just write what they're paid to write. Perhaps those areas are
> things that TWs should pitch and demonstrate their skills toward.

-- 
Bill Swallow
HATT List Owner
WWP-Users List Owner
Senior Member STC, TechValley Chapter
STC Single-Sourcing SIG Manager
http://techcommdood.blogspot.com