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
