San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication

A California election offered a natural experiment in user interface design—an open Senate seat that would be on the ballot statewide. Ballot designs must adhere to legal, technical, and financial constraints, but there is still room for variation. California’s 58 counties came up with 58 different designs. Nancy Frishberg was part of a group that analyzed the results after the election. They evaluated whether any of the discretionary graphic treatments and county-specific wording achieved better results or fewer errors. Did wording, layout or other graphic design elements lead to more accurate voting (fewer disqualified ballots)?

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Back in the day, tech writers were the vanguard of software usability; the way to make software easier to use was to write a better user manual. But then along came usability, and writers discovered that they could better serve their readers by helping engineers to make software easier to use. Writers also made their instructions more accessible by providing user assistance in the form of more lucid UI text, tooltips, and context-sensitive help.

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Three managers who interview and make hiring decisions regarding technical writers, editors, illustrators or other roles in the broad category of technical documentation will discuss what they are looking for in potential candidates and give you some insight into how they work. There will be time for questions from the meeting attendees.

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You will be provided with real world examples by a presenter whose primary work is OSINT investigation (open-source intelligence, data gathering from publicly available sources), along with an extensive handout containing various domestic and international websites for gathering intelligence, tips for searching, list of available tools, and list of OSINT experts to which you can turn when you have specific needs. We will delve into privacy plus the ups and down of LinkedIn, Amazon, social networking and online searching such as Spokeo.

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Open source software projects provide writers (and software engineers) opportunities to develop their skills, make meaningful contributions, and produce authentic work samples. These projects are almost always looking for help, including documentation and testing. But how do you get noticed when the primary communication channel is a mailing list and no one knows who you are? See how Gale Naylor leveraged her open-source experience to change careers and become a full-time technical writer at Facebook. Continue reading →