Society for Technical Communication

Accurate service information is critical to the continued reliability and performance of your products once they are in your customers’ hands. However, creating this information has been traditionally a stand-alone, time-consuming and error prone process.

In order to transform a service organization from a cost center to a revenue-generating business, companies need to optimize their processes, enhance their ability to capture customer information, and develop a method for leveraging this information to improve service quality. Information quality and the capability to deliver product- and customer-specific information to service technicians plays a critical role for the success of the organization. Successful service documentation helps technicians quickly diagnose problems and perform maintenance and repair procedures.

Attend this webcast to learn how PTC’s solution for service documentation will allow you to:

• Increase authoring efficiency through standards, content topics and component-based content reuse
• Enhance technical illustrations by the direct reuse of CAD designs and interactive 2D, 3D & animated illustrations
• Reduce publishing costs through automated multi-format publishing and electronic content distribution
• Improve Consumer Experience by creating interactive content and personalized delivery

Most technical communicators understand the importance of usability testing for a product's success. Some may have even been involved in some way in a product usability test. However, many TCs have never considered conducting basic usability testing of their documentation. They may think that it is expensive and time-consuming, or they fear that they lack the experience. Some just want to learn how to sell the idea to management. This webinar is a good introduction to the concepts of usability testing for documentation. It presents straight-forward guidelines and practical tips to allow any TC to get started with low-cost yet effective testing.

Leah Guren entered the field of technical communication in 1980. Her extensive experience has allowed her to develop key training programs, including the course for new TCs run by In Other WORDS, one of Israel's leading technical communication companies. She also conducts seminars for experienced technical communicators, engineers, and managers internationally. Leah provides product and documentation usability consulting for clients in Israel and Europe. She has helped numerous tech pubs departments to design and conduct easy, on-site testing of documentation. The material in this workshop is a composite of Leah's practical experience in usability, as well as material covered in her training courses. As an internationally-recognized professional speaker, Leah is known for her ability to bring dry theory to life with practical examples and plenty of humor.

Task support clusters represent a bottom-up approach to information design that focuses on optimizing the user assistance experience that starts with the user accessing page-level or tab-level context sensitive Help. A task-support cluster is a group of help topics that meet the specific information needs of a user who is currently working within the user interface. A task-support cluster is designed to answer the most likely questions first and then let the user drill down to more detailed, elementary, or advanced information if needed. Its goal is to get the user back on task as quickly as possible.

This presentation shows detailed architectural patterns aimed at meeting domain expertise needs of users (versus interaction-intensive procedures) within a DITA model and demonstrates how Task Modeler, an open source tool, can be used to quickly design task support clusters and convert them into DITA maps. The architectural principles, however, can be applied outside of a DITA context.

Attendees will learn the following:

• How to define the user assistance experience as part of the larger user experience.
• How to architect help topics in context of goal-oriented activities on the user interface.
• How to use a graphical architecture tool to plan information products.

Michael Hughes has a PhD in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia and a Masters in Technical and Professional Communication from Southern Polytechnic State University. He is a Fellow with the Society for Technical Communication and a Certified Performance Technologist through the International Society for Performance Improvement. His professional focus is supporting user experiences that accommodate the “user as learner.” Hughes works for IBM Internet Security Systems as a User Assistance Architect identifying tools, methods, and standards to integrate the content and delivery of user assistance, including documentation, help, e-learning, and training. He is coauthor of A Research Primer for Technical Communication and he writes the column “User Assistance: Putting Help in Context” for UXmatters.

With so many online formats and technologies, how do you know which one to pick? It’s confusing; ten years after WebHelp appeared, there’s still confusion over the difference between it and “Web Help”. This presentation discusses the major online formats and outputs – HTML, XHTML, HTML Help, WebHelp, FlashHelp, DotNet Help, and others – to explain how they differ and how to select the right one for you. As online information becomes increasingly complex and becomes subject to greater time-to-market and ROI pressures, there’s less room for mistakes. Knowing these formats will help you guide your company online and increase your professional value.

Neil Perlin has 29 years experience in technical communication, with 23 in training, consulting, and development for various online formats and tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, JavaHelp, WebHelp, RoboHelp, ForeHelp, Flare, and many now known only in legend. Neil is a columnist and frequent speaker for the STC, IEEE PCS, and other professional groups, a member of the STC’s Boston chapter, the creator and manager of the Beyond the Bleeding Edge stem at the STC’s annual conference from 1999 to 2006, and an Associate Fellow of the STC.

Neil is a Madcap Certified Instructor for Flare and Mimic, and an Adobe-Certified Instructor for RoboHelp and Captivate. He provides training, consulting, and development for online help and documentation, Flare, RoboHelp, Captivate, Mimic, XML, single-sourcing, and structured authoring through Hyper/Word Services of Tewksbury, MA.

Naomi Robbins is a consultant and seminar leader who specializes in the graphical display of data. She trains employees of corporations and organizations on effective data presentation. She also reviews documents and presentations for clients, suggesting improvements or alternative presentations as appropriate. She is the author of Creating More Effective Graphs, published by John Wiley (2005). Dr. Robbins is a past officer of the Statistical Graphics Section of the American Statistical Association.