Technical writing newsletter 21: June 2007

Document status: archived

Technical communication surveys

'Nobody reads user manuals' and 'people always phone the helpdesk' are popular opinions. What is the evidence for these statements? TechScribe's survey reveals users' documentation preferences.

How do the best-performing companies structure their technical documentation departments? One recommendation from Aberdeen Group's survey of over 300 companies is to involve technical communicators early in the software development life cycle (www.aberdeen.com).

Website design

The Usability Professionals' Association invited Mike Unwalla to the Northern UK chapter meeting. An a-to-z index is a significant boost to the usability of a website, and Mike demonstrated techniques for creating an index.

Website design is more than just graphics and visual design. Usability, accessibility, findability, readability, and other factors are important. TechScribe presents a technical communication perspective of web design for the British Computer Society (www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/11488).

Newsletter index | |

RSS feed