Let's Tech Communicate!
November
Luke Pivac talks about rapid e-learning development, collaborative user testing, ten design principles and when to violate them; plus effective labelling for technical communicators. This and much from around the Net!
Out of this world
In Rapid eLearning Development: Choose the Right Tools for the Work, Jill Parman offers some good advice on authoring tools for e-learning developers. She also highlights some common features for using these tools. These include: interactions, ease of use, importing media, screen recording, quizzes that you can provide users, publishing outputs, ability to be compatible with different learning management systems, etc.
Also see Collaborative User Testing: Less Bias, Better Research by Alla Kholmatova. In it, Kholmatova discusses how she and her team use an informal approach - called guerrilla user testing - in their user testing to encourage a more natural behaviour that consequently reduces the effect of bias that users could be prone to.
Tips and tricks
Geoff Hart highlights the top ten design principles in technical communication, and when to violate them. The principles include using minimalism techniques and making it thorough enough - while being simple as possible, always understandable, and always useful.
We also look at ways to create video recordings that you can share on line. Bernard Aschwanden suggests that video has become the next big thing when it comes to documenting how things are done. Find out more in Tips and Tricks: Creating Video Recordings to Share Online.
Another useful tip is how users can use a variety of Android applications for their smart phones. Scott Nesbitt highlights two apps in particular; Smart Voice Record and Rehearsal Assistant. You can find out more in a pair of useful apps for recording interviews.
The newbie tech communicator's toolbox
In this section we look at how technical communicators can create effective labels. In this article by Leah Guren, she talks about how the skillful labelling of product parts is an important technique in the technical communicator’s toolbox. Guren believes that all technical communication professionals should study up on user experience concepts, and advocates that technical communicators should promote their UX and usability expertise so that we can be involved earlier in the development process.
Finally, in this article called the changing nature of content, Ellis Pratt discusses how technology has vastly changed over the past 70 years, and he asks whether technical communicators' standards have kept up with those changes. I recommend his very useful insights.
A bit of fun
Have you heard where you can get funny technical writer hats from? Well there is a place – check out Technical Writer Jokes Hats.
Look out for more tips, tricks and fun in the world of technical communication in our Christmas edition. Happy November everyone!
Luke Pivac
TechCommNZ Committee member