Interactivity in Instruction

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Bill

There are some key features to instructional design that are not in, say, documentation or support, and that’s what makes it interesting. I’m not a full-time instructional designer, but I have this idea that there is something fundamental that separates instructional design from other interfaces with the customer. A crucial aspect of instructional design is the development of interactivity. That is what is missing from traditional documentation or support. Training material must allow an instructor and student working together during a process. It is easy to see this with in-person training; often we take for granted these interactions. But with online instruction, the interactivity between student and teacher, between student and material, and between students, is no less important. With any instruction, whether in person or online, there is always a need for engagement of the student and feedback from the student (as in Formative Feedback). The interaction helps inform the instructor that the student is learning or at least using the material or product or service. Just as the student must be given opportunities to interact with the instructor, the interaction with other students and with the material can be just as important.

This adds a level of complexity to online instruction because that interaction must be designed in. Designers must provide a way to measure that interaction, too. Instructional design must include feedback and instructor-student interaction; it must facilitate this interactivity and make it seem effortless and natural. It requires seeing instruction more as a process than as a product. This interaction (or feedback) must happen in multiple directions:

  • Between student and material
  • Between student and instructor
  • Between instructor and student
  • Between students (where possible)

I’m not alone. Others think we should structure the learning activities to foster student-instructor, student-student, and student-content interactions.

In a way it is almost as if you are documenting a process (of learning how to use something or how to achieve results using the product or service being trained on) as opposed to documenting a static product (like a piece of hardware). Whether you provide that interaction at the end of a module or during it will depend on your situation and what model of learning you espouse. But promoting that interaction and providing ways to measure its effectiveness is the ultimate goal. The actual content of the material may only be one third of the job. The interaction, in all these dimensions, is the key.

The following article has two Best Practices that touch on interactivity but don’t focus on it. This the ‘Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online (Quick Guide for New Online Faculty)’ by Dr. Judith V. Boettcher. This list has these two:

  • Best Practice 6: Early in the term…, ask for informal feedback on “How is the course going?” and “Do you have any suggestions?”
  • Best Practice 7: Prepare Discussion Posts that Invite Questions, Discussions, Reflections and Responses

And the ‘Best Practices in Designing Online Courses from Las Positas College’ has one about interaction. See number 6 in their list for ‘interactivity’. Finally, the ‘Online Course Design Guidelines from the University of Vermont’ has number 4, which calls it Social Presence and Interaction. This is just a smattering of what’s out there. I’m sure you can find more – feel free to leave a comment with more links.

Instructional design is certainly a dynamic profession – as technology changes, as corporations expand and contract, as more content and learning is outsourced and socialized, this interface with the customer is going through some drastic changes. But there is one key element that does not change – the interactivity that must be part of instruction. This element of interactivity is always essential, despite the changes, despite the numerous models and theories, and despite the extreme need to train professionals more quickly and more cheaply. Professionals doing instructional design can share what is successful, what works in the trenches, not just what looks like a coherent model or theoretical construct. I hope my ranting about the importance of interactivity has touched a nerve. Be aware of interactivity while designing instructional material and online courses; it is the key element that makes instructional design unique and valuable.

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Mobile Feast

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Bill

In keeping with what he has written in Mobile First, Luke Wroblewski, alias @LukeW, presented some great ideas about web interface design. He is a proponent of considering mobile devices and considering them first when designing web sites. At the TriUXPA meeting in Raleigh, NC, a bunch of (16 in all) watched his webinar over a catered supper. Good food and food for thought. (Thanks Capstrat for hosting the event.)

By working within the constraints of the size of mobile devices (of whatever shape and size), you can improve the design of a web site (and maybe a web app?) for all types of devices. Going mobile is the right way to go; Luke gave a whole new meaning to “movable type”. People are accessing more information on smaller devices at more locations and at more times. Where to put navigation on smaller screens, how to consider content first (since that’s the value that users seek), and putting mobile thinking above desktop thinking are all ideas flowing from Luke’s brain. His great use of examples made it easy to understand his points. Quoting from Rachel Hinman’s The Mobile Frontier and showing the value of Responsive Web Design (along with responsive multi-level navigation), his presentation covered a range of ideas.

Here are two ideas that Luke did not cover: voice control and multi-layered web design.

Voice Control
As screens shrink and navigation becomes a challenge, the lack of screen space might not be a problem as more voice activation comes into general use. If I can simply say a command or request an action by voice, it doesn’t matter whether there is a navigation menu with that command on it and space is no longer an issue. Whether you are searching on a site or taking action, a verbal command might be all you need to accomplish your goal.

I find it interesting that I am not alone in thinking about this:
Are voice controlled interfaces a new form of interaction design or a replacement for interaction design?.

Multi-Layer Interface
I am using my crystal ball here and foreseeing a time when, just as desktop interfaces went from command line to graphical to multiple windows, the mobile device will offer multiple layers of screens, similar to tabs in a browser, so the user does not have to sacrifice context for content or navigation. Just as layers in graphical design programs let you work on multiple levels, so the designers of mobile devices will create a way for users to layer their screens, whether menus on top of content or multiple layers of content. It’s coming; I’m telling you.

Stay tuned for other ideas on web design. Thanks, Luke for getting the creative juices going.

Posted in Blog, Design, Information Architecture, Interface, User Experience, user group meetings, Web Applications | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

UA Tools Survey Review

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Bill

Joe Welinski has done it again: produced a great tools survey and published the results. Here it is:

While the cynical among us might think this is self serving, drawing viewers to his site to drum up more business for his conferences, I think he’s doing a great job and a offering a great service to the professional community. I applaud his effort and want him to know that it’s a great thing that he offers his results for free. He offers caveats, but I grant him those. I think the sampling is representative and I think it does represent the interests of technical writers involved in software user assistance. No problem there. But…

But, I still don’t know if it’s relevant when all the numbers are tallied. Or at least not as relevant as it used to be. Here is some food for thought.

  • There is a much bigger field and wider spread of user assistance people than those from a tech writing background and from who call themselves UA professionals.
  • User assistance and technical support and online training – the boundaries of these previously separate and silo-ed disciplines are blurring.
  • Technology is changing so rapidly, the tool might be obsolete in one generation of technology (which may be less than a year). (Maybe he needs an ongoing survey and results.)
  • Tools are proliferating; look at the list of tools that are used by only one or two – that’s a long tail if I ever saw it.

I’m just saying.

Another thought I had is that it might help to distinguish between utilities (screen capture tools or PDF viewers) and full-blown authoring environments – they’re not both “tools”, are they? Utilities are like hand tools; authorizing environments are the entire workshop. There are add-ons to my browser that offer more productivity than some of the tools listed. Now that I think about it, I forgot to list those in my “Other” option. Maybe many of you did, too.

I really appreciated that he listed all the comments. It’s not necessarily easy to read, the way they are all strung together, but at least he included all of them, and I applaud him for it.

The problem with a tools survey is that it assumes that tools are desktop applications, or at least there is a bias in that direction. But are we really only using desktop applications? This survey didn’t even mention social media – does that count as a tool? Certainly we all use search engines and YouTube now when we need info on how to do something new; aren’t some of us using social media for distributing content? I think it’s time to widen the survey to match the diversity of tools and diversity of platforms.

Good job and thanks for sharing your results, Joe! Keep up the good work.

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Extreme Judging

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Bill

For a day of intense technical communication, comes the event of the year – STC Carolina Chapter Competition Judging. Last year, the chapter did a great job of taking a long drawn-out process of providing feedback on competition entries – both hard copy publications and electronic media of every kind – and compressing it into a single one-day event. Yesterday’s judging event followed that pattern successfully. More than 35 professionals met at the training center on the SAS Campus in Cary, North Carolina for a rousing day of reviewing and evaluating over 70 entries submitted by chapter members from around the Triangle area.
Collage of STC Competition Judging Event

This was as close to real-time as the chapter has accomplished thus far. Short of WebEx-ing with the contributors, this form of judging – with training in the morning and award nominations in the afternoon, and all the evaluations done in between – there is nothing faster, more intense, more extreme than this. The training was led by Jennifer Raisig, the organization by Betsy Kent, and the recruiting by Sheila Loring. Other notables were Larry Kunz, Andrea Wenger, Terry Smith, and Ann-Marie Grissino. In some ways this was a very retro event – bringing together the old timers and looking at good old user manuals – and in other ways it was very up-to-date with new faces and excitement reviewing online videos and multimedia presentations. The organizers did a great job of dividing up the work into small teams; the teams were great at finding a consensus about which works deserved real praise. The little gifts given out during the day kept the event from taking itself too seriously – the split playing cards was a good way to handle a raffle.

Thanks to all the technical communicators who did a great job and gave up a good portion of a Saturday to do this. Thanks to the folks at SAS for making the wonderful facility available. Thanks to the STC Carolina Chapter for having such a cool and innovative and productive event.

Posted in Conferences, Profession, Professional Association | Tagged | Comments Off

Protoblocking: Using HTML Blocks for Modular Prototyping

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Bill

A bunch of us met at Capstrat in Raleigh to see the latest webinar sponsored locally by TriUXPA. The webinar speaker, Nathan Curtis, from EightShapes, talked about building HTML prototypes. His talk was titled “Start Full Screen: Organize, Communicate, & Annotate HTML Prototypes”. It was pretty long (an hour and a half) but informative. Many of us agreed that this type of approach and its related framework, would be useful for larger groups devoted to prototyping in HTML, but many of us in the room are working for smaller companies, so we are weighing the usefulness of using EightShape’s product.

Photo of TriUXPA Webinar at Capstrat

The ten of us sat around a conference table and stopped the webinar during the Question-and-Answer time and asked our own questions of each other. Thanks to Evan Carroll from Capstrat for hosting (and for showing me the cool office space he works in) and to Adam Rogers for running the show. Thanks to Bruce Mehrenbloom for kicking off some great discussion and for Michael and others for joining right in.

You can’t argue with Nathan’s approach to modularizing, organizing, and annotating prototypes. With his purist approach to using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, he is afforded some freedom from the constraints of other technologies and allowing his prototypes to run on any machine (practically). If you buy his approach to doing HTML/CSS/JavaScript-only prototyping, then the framework that EightShapes offers seems like an intelligent way to work collaboratively and simply. He gets the “truthiness” award for making “doneness” a word. His mentioning of the Transform element in CSS3 and of the IPEVO document camera for collaborative sketching got some additional tangential discussion going. All in all, it was another great TriUXPA meeting and I’m glad I went.

P.S. Some additional podcast discussion is at UIE Brainsparks.

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Affordances are not Afterthoughts

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Bill

When we have a great event, such as the TriUXPA meeting tonight, we realize what great things collaboration can accomplish! Richard Phelps, the president of the chapter; the speakers, Rex Hartson from Virginia Tech and Pardha Pyla from Bloomberg; Lulu for hosting the event; and the 20 plus members who came out. Thanks to all!

This was fun and informative. “Affordances and their Importance to UX Practitioners” was the title of the presentation. Rex and Pardha, joint authors of The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience, gave a great introduction to “affordances”, those aspects of the user experience that help, aid, or guide the user. This is such an important part of the user experience; it’s amazing that it is not covered sooner is their book. (It’s in chapter 20.) A few lucky members won free copies of the book – I know who I’m borrowing a copy from. Here’s an invitation to anyone who reads the book (or has read the book) – if you want to post your opinion of it or comments about it, I’ll post a blog entry here on my site – just submit it to me.

Lulu has a great facility on Hillsborough near the campus of NC State University. With the Irregardless Cafe providing the food, you couldn’t have a better hosted event!

During the question and answer period, there was talk about “Save” being a dying metaphor – why should the user have to click a button to perform a Save action, when the application should just take care of that? (as Google Docs handles edits of a page.) There was mention of Metro but this is new to me, so I’ll have to read up on this before I talk more about it. Since most of their examples of ‘affordances’ in the user interface were about buttons and levers and things to start an action or a task, I asked about affordances that indicate whether a task is complete or the status of the progress if something is loading or the user has to wait. Rex answered that this is covered in the book. He also mentioned that affordances can indicate what the next step should be for a user, if tasks are dependent or must be performed sequentially. This is definitely something I’m going to work on with the designers/developers at Paragon, where I work.

Bloomberg is also now hiring for multiple UX positions. See open positions here: http://www.bloomberg.com/ux/. If anyone is looking to hire a talented new grad, contact Mercedes Gosby and tell her Bill Albing sent you.

Posted in Interface, Professional Association, User Experience, user group meetings | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Currentness of the Collaborative Cloud

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Bill

Offline to All-line
Once upon a time we talked about working “offline” as a way of saying that we were working on paper or in person, away from and apart from a computer. As more of our work moved to the computer (and we weren’t doing work if it wasn’t on the computer), “offline” began to mean working on your computer specifically, but disconnected from the rest of the Internet. We worked for years using the computer as an appliance that allowed us to work disconnected from everyone else and disconnected in silos of information.
I honestly can’t remember the last time anyone used the word “offline”. I don’t think people use that word much anymore. Not long ago you couldn’t work off your computer; now you can’t work without being connected.

Together We Work
Everyone’s work is collaborative these days; it all requires a connection to the Internet. More of my time is spent Web conferencing with others, Skyping with colleagues, doing Google searches, and doing other cloud activities. It seems only a short while ago we were talking about the day when we would be doing this at work. Now I don’t have time to catch my breath between online activities, work flowing from one collaborative engagement after another. I don’t know if we are in teams or knots. Sometimes it is one-on-one, sometimes it the entire team, sometimes it is open-ended and different people come and go.

Service or Infrastructure?
It was not that long ago that if you needed to upload a picture or have some service, you needed an account at that web site. You used to do most of your work in desktop applications and occasionally went to the Web for some information. Now I can upload pictures or get a Web address (URL) shortened without even logging in. No questions asked. I can get map information, I can find content at the most granular level, all without paying anyone or registering. I’m spending more of my time at Web sites and Web apps – and I don’t even know if there is a difference. Is it site (a place) or an application (a tool)? It’s both.
And it’s not just computers that are connected and allowing us to collaborate. We have phones and other mobile devices that allow us to stay connected in more places and more ways than we thought possible only a few years ago.

Distance is Gone
My brother gave me access to a document on Google; my colleagues at work used a spreadsheet in the cloud. Whether family or work, we are all moving into the cloud. No one asks ‘Should we work in the cloud?’; we are just in it. We are all working collaboratively. We are all working in the cloud.
Add to that the reach of collaboration – the fact that I’m Web conferencing with people all over the world and not even thinking about it; that we sometimes don’t even say where we are; that a gal from down the hall may be visiting a remote office and connecting in as if she’s at her desk; that half our company is not only remote but distributed geographically. I am connecting with more people in other countries using LinkedIn and Twitter and not even giving it a second thought.

Work or Play
I have an account with Amazon.com to sell books as a hobby. But Amazon has the online tools available for me to run it like a business. In fact, I do make money when I sell books that I have bought for cheap, either at thrift stores or yard sales. This is just one example of how the line is blurring of what is work and what is play. I connect with people around the world who buy my books; the tools are available in the cloud for me keep track of sales that are as sophisticated as any business would have – inventory tracking, order management, customer communication- it’s all there. And often when working in the cloud, the distinctions between work and play may only be whether you’re making enough money or not.

One Big Happy Cloud
Are we lost in a fog or immersed in a cloud? Eventually, I will get used to being so connected. But I’ll always be of the generation that made the transition, that started offline and began to see cracks in the silos until we were all mobile and all present with each other and collaborating in ways and on projects that we hadn’t even thought possible only a short time ago. I was born when there was time and distance, when people worked with things and computers handled information or metadata. Now we are all connecting and it’s not so clear where one project ends and another begins, if content has boundaries and if any limitations apply to what is possible.

Posted in Blog, cloud solutions, Collaboration, Web Applications | Tagged , | Comments Off

Content Stratification

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Bill

Ever-Broadening Content Horizons
In her recent blog post ‘Content strategy – a revolution?’, Betty Tew is just touching the tip of the iceberg (or, whatever the equivalent in a cloud metaphor would be). I like how she refers to “the ever-broadening field of business and technical communications” because as I see it, tech writing (or technical communication) is becoming subsumed under larger circles in the Venn diagram of professional activities. It is still there and still important, but not the overarching discipline that it used to be. Silos that previously separated the specialties are going away. It’s time for us all to play together in the same space. Tech comm is playing a smaller part because more people want more types of information in more channels quicker. And no one has time to read it all, so we are working to automate part of the process and filter a lot of the content and design the interface so users don’t need so much explanation. So I think content strategy is part of the process of dealing with the disruption and change in our industry.

Challenge of Content Strategy
Last weekend I listened to Sarah O’Keefe’s webcast ‘Content strategy in technical communication’. When she got to the part where she asked the audience “What are YOUR challenges?”, I knew immediately – but I don’t think it is on her list of frequent responses. My biggest strategy challenge is not what amount or type of content to post or what format to deliver content, but how to build community, how to foster collaboration?
Content isn’t just something I create and send out to a willing audience. My strategy is to engage in conversation so content needs to flow both ways. Where in content strategy is any of that handled? Content strategy seems to focus on the content and the business value of content. But my customers do not need content (at least not content alone).
They need conversation. And how do you manage content once it is out there in social media, where others send it out, mix it up, create their own? When the conversation is happening and others join in, how does “content strategy” help?

How Separate?
I appreciate that Sarah wants so separate tech comm as a separate body of content with a different purpose from marketing communications and other more persuasive communications. It all might be blurring together and it might not be as useful as it was in the past to consider it as a separate type of content. Is segmenting persuasive comm. from tech. transfer useful? Let’s just say I’m not convinced yet. And talking about separate (but equal), can you really create a strategy for content that is separate from the rest of the company’s strategy? Is it really a separate process, a separate strategy? I’m wondering why we have content strategy as separate from sales strategy, service strategy, market strategy, product strategy, customer management strategy, etc.? Can anyone answer these questions for me?

Posted in Content Development, content lifecycle, content management, Process, Profession, Social Networking | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Designing is Getting Touchy

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Bill

Introduction
Last Thursday, I joined other local TriUPA members and listened to Josh Clark‘s webinar titled “Buttons are a Hack”. He ostensibly was trying to get us to do more with gestures and less with traditional windows controls, menus, and buttons in designing the interfaces for mobile devices. It’s not just the smaller size of screen that is motivating the change:
he really wants us to give users more direct interaction with the content. His webinar got a bunch of us thinking about trends in user interface design.

Call for Gestures
As an old guy who was just getting used to the existing computer interface conventions that were based on metaphors – folder, desktops, etc. – I found it refreshing but a bit scary. But, after all, a tablet (or other mobile device with appreciable screen estate) is somewhere between paper and computer, between phone and game console. With a touch screen, it deserves some rethinking of the user interaction.

So we are being advised to throw away all the silly stuff that we accept as convention; all those desktop metaphor controls are indirect and they are separating the user from the content and from their primitive bodily movements that have developed over thousands of years of evolution. Or at least, that’s what I heard.

Josh offered some pithy axioms:

  • “Gestures are the keyboard shortcut of touch.”
  • “Content is the control.”
  • “Information is the interface.”

This sounds like a good starting point. Well, okay, I can see the direction this is going for mobile devices and touch screens. More thought is going to have to go into the design. He referred to LukeW.com for a reference guide of touch gestures.

Which gestures could be considered general or universal? You have swipe, tap, tap & hold, pinch, spread, etc. We could consider several finger touch (as some games do) but we may run into accessibility issues. We need to reduce the impact of Fitt’s law where at all possible. But we need to adopt some conventions so users don’t have to relearn the interface for each application.

Just Gestures
After some discussion on how we could discover gestures and how a user could learn gestures, he made the point that users will need to learn as they go. So as designers, we will have to introduce learning to the user without being in their face. He suggested we all look at how a player learns video games as a great example. With a more interactive interface we should follow these three ideas from gaming:

  • Coaching – prompt the user if they look lost
  • Leveling Up – introduce easy stuff at early levels and save complicated stuff for the expert
  • Power Ups – provide shortcuts for expert users and ways to advance

I would like to add two additional ideas from gaming that came from a discussion with a colleague:

  • managing inventory – let the interface save and organize your information
  • key or reference – transitioning between rooms or levels there is always some map of terrain or point of reference, some metadata to help

Coaching Social
I would go further with the gamification insights, but I wonder if they exhaust the possibilities for learning. Most of the examples he gave were for games where I play against the computer or against other players but by myself. This still doesn’t handle collaboration and the social aspects that are needed for the growing amount of collaborative work. It doesn’t encourage or train you to work with others, even if it does provide incentives. As a rudimentary example, think of the skills you needed to drive on the highway. Part of the skill is controlling the car, but part of the skill is getting the right space between your car and the other cars; yielding or taking the right of way; keeping up with traffic. This is more than just learning the road signs and how to drive your car by yourself. It means learning how to work with others so that everyone arrives safely. Let’s see if the user interface can help with that as well.

For more, on Twitter, search #uievs (for UIE virtual seminars).

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Tintinnabulation

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Bill

This week I went to see the movie ‘Adventures of Tintin’ with my now grown sons. When they were boys, I introduced them to the Tintin books, mostly the English ones. So it was partly nostalgic to see it with them. My recommendation is that the 3-D version is not worth the extra price; just see it in ordinary 2-D. And don’t expect a huge Steven Spielberg effects extravaganza or epic war scenes of other Peter Jackson movies, though both guys have done their parts here – just expect the fun of seeing Tintin. If you are a Tintin fan, you won’t be disappointed with the creation of hilarious if improbable action that typifies the comic book. The mixture of plausible slapstick and subtle humor were faithfully included and make for an enjoyable hour and 45 minute experience. There is a great setup of action and there are easy transitions between settings (ships at sea to airplanes to crossing a desert) which you can take for granted in the books but are hard to do in a movie without causing disruption.

Having seen several more sophisticated action movies lately, one can be jaded – expecting more mature handling of different social and cultural issues- but these are based on comic books of a previous generation and the movie makers were loyal to the spirit of those comic books. Unlike the latest rash of comic book movies based on superheros, there is no embellishment of characters, no explaining formative childhood experiences, just plain Tintin. I’m guessing that if you remember the books, you might even know some of the plot line or be able to guess what happens next in an action sequence, but enjoy it regardless. There isn’t really any character development per se – some action movies based on comic books do a good job of developing characters and making the movies deeper than their original comics, but you won’t find that here. There are the bumbling detective Thompson twins; there is the silly white dog (Snowy or Milou, depending on whether you read the American or European versions) who sometimes is as smart as any human; there is Captain Haddock who gets to say “Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!” and is always looking for the next bottle of whiskey. There are no strong female roles, there is no interaction with the people in what looks like Muslim Africa, and there is only a nod to the Captain’s alcohol problem, where in the end he throws the whiskey bottles instead of drinking them, as if he has decided to stay sober, but then there is no such sensitivities in the comic books either, so I can’t criticize the movie for what it lacks. Maybe the fact that this movie is showing all around the world and in many languages offers its own redemption in this regard.

Overall, the three of us rated the movie between 8.5 to 9.0 on a scale of 1 to 10. I hope you enjoy. Be sure to see the trailer at IMDB. If you want to see other reviews, try Grace Randolph’s review or Jeremy Jahn’s review. Now I’m more hopeful that someone will do a movie version of Asterix & Obelix. That would really ring some bells. And I’ll have a great excuse to get my sons back together for a trip down memory lane while enjoying some fun entertainment.

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Web Analysis Project

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Bill

There are many ways to interpret a web site. Through user interfaces, design patterns, business achievements, and social acceptance, one can obtain a general and sufficient understanding of a web site and what it has to offer. I am developing a project that may help us better comprehend and express the ability of a web site to achieve value for its users. As a starting point, I will compare two distinctly different web sites that have some overlap in functional capability. The sites will be compared on several dimensions, using different types of metrics and forms of description. By actively using both sites with experience I have gained through working with them, my research stays grounded in reality. Two sites that I am currently working with are Amazon and BookMooch. I use both to exchange books with others – selling books on Amazon, and exchanging books for free on BookMooch. My work will be posted on KeyContent.org. An outline and introduction will be coming soon. Stay tuned to this blog for regular updates and insights.

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The Social Cut

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Bill

There is an intriguing movie, The Final Cut, in which implantable chips record each person’s every sight, giving a veritable recorded history of that person’s life. (See Amazon or IMDB.) Of course not everyone has the chip which makes for some interesting plot – Robin William’s character, a cutter, is responsible for reviewing a person’s chip after that person’s death and editing it down to a meaningful final review to be shown at the funeral. While the technology of such an implantable chip is not too far fetched, what is done with the recorded information could make for any number of suspenseful plots. The technology for putting so much information about a person’s life online seems possible now; in terms of audiovisual recording, people have claimed to be putting longer and longer recordings of their day online already. The interesting thing is how the editing is done and by whom. That’s what I think warrants some discussion.

In The Final Cut, it is the experienced cutter, a life editor, who determines what is representative, meaningful, and worth viewing at the funeral. But what if, as long as all the recording is online, the parts of that’s person’s life is rated by the viewers – those who watch the life’s recording, with family and relatives perhaps getting a higher weighted rating? What if what is shown at the funeral is determined by the social community based on the ratings of the parts of the recording? And what if, instead of a single viewing during the funeral, the edited final cut is available online as well, as an abstract is to an entire longer thesis? Once the information, the life’s recording, is online, what need is there for a single cutter? Besides an automated final cut based on social ratings, there could be any number of artistic or cultural cutters who could create different cuts for different audiences. The possibilities are as limitless as the Internet.

Posted in Philosphy, Review, Social Networking | Comments Off

Succint On-Site Online Survey

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Bill

Recently Brian Calder asked me to participate in the beta program of a really cool mini-survey tool called Xurtle.

http://blog.xurtle.com/beta-program

See the survey on the right side of this blog – it’s a survey I created using Xurtle.

This is a tool that, as he says, “can satisfy or complement your online customer feedback collection needs” but I see it more as a Web site visitor engagement tool. I was able to create a new survey and post it into my blog within a matter of minutes. I took my time because, well, for two reasons – I wanted to play with the wording and size of the questions, and because I was recording my experience so I could give Brian some constructive feedback. But I could have set it up and published it very quickly and effortlessly.

I’m completely sold on the idea of an online survey that resides on my Web site. Other survey tools take the user away from the site to their survey site; other tools are too complicated and have me doing programming. With Xurtle, I have a survey that fits in the widgets column of my blog and all that is necessary is a URL (which Xurtle generates) that points to the Xurtle site where the engine resides. But the survey is on my site. I’ll have more to report on this, as I create a more complete review of the product soon. But I wanted to let everyone know, I am pleased with the product and was able to include some feedback for Brian including some cool enhancement ideas.

Posted in Blog, Design, Information Architecture, Online Survey, Tools, Web Applications | Tagged | 1 Comment

Authenticate This

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Bill

It is becoming apparent what the next step for smart phone development will be. And I don’t mean making them smaller; they’re small enough. They now have a GPS (for locating), a camera (for taking pictures), a mirror (if you have the right app), and of course a phone, which can be used for talking or texting. They will soon have voice activation for many tasks. And of course they have Internet access; it’s not so much that they are smart as it is that they are connected. But that’s not what I’m talking about either. I’m looking at the next step in their ability to handle transactions, not just financial ones either, because right now we can purchase things from the Internet or from a vending machine using our phones. The next step goes beyond just replacing the money and credit cards in our wallets that give us the ability to purchase things. They will do more than just perform financial transactions. With the added functionality of authentication they will replace not only the money and cards in our wallets but also our licenses and keys in our pockets and purses. With the intelligence of authentication, smart phones will not only be connected but also have a level of agency for us. They will allow us to handle other transactions, like transferring medical records or gaining membership-only access to areas or information, that require proof of our identity, namely authentication. We are only at the beginning of what we will be able to do electronically and easily as long as we are connected. We may have to come up with a better name for them than just ‘smart phones’.

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Profession Realignment

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Bill

Today I’m comparing the list of program tracks at the STC Summit for 2011 and 2012. Notice the difference in names of tracks. Maybe that’s telling us something about the profession.

Here are last year’s tracks (“Before”):

  • Usability and Accessibility
  • Managing People, Projects, and Business
  • Writing and Editing
  • Design, Architecture, and Publishing
  • Communication and Interpersonal Skills
  • Education and Training
  • Professional Development
  • Web Technologies

Here are this year tracks (“After”):

  • User Experience & Accessibility
  • People, Project, and Business Management
  • Content Development
  • Content Strategy and Design
  • Content Delivery
  • Education and Training
  • Professional Development
  • Web Design and Development
  • Visual Design
  • Social Media

Here’s what I surmise from these track name changes:

  1. “Usability” has expanded into “User Experience”.
  2. “Writing and Editing” is gone as a moniker for what we do – now it is “Content Development”.
  3. “Design, Arch & Publ.” is now broken up into “Content Strategy & Design” and “Content Delivery” and “Web Design & Development”.
  4. “Comm & Interpersonal Skills” is gone or else subsumed under “Managing”.
  5. “Web Technologies” (a kind of vague catch-all) has been replaced with “Web Design & Development”, “Visual Design”, and “Social Media”.
    Or one could say we’re adding “Visual Design”, and “Social Media” (finally).
  6. The ones that had little or no change (“Some things never change.”) are:
    • People, Project & Business Management
    • Education & Training
    • Professional Development
  7. Looks like “Content” is the new buzz word – no mention of “Information” or “Architecture”. Looks like a conscious decision. Which is interesting because there is an “Information Design & Architecture” SIG in STC.
  8. I wonder where ‘editing’ and ‘indexing’ and ‘mar comm’ and ‘process docs’ fits in this scheme?

It would be interesting to look at the SIGs and see how they line up with these tracks; so does biotech writing just fit under “Content Development”?

Besides the tracks there are also what are called additional Institutes (for advanced content) – more forward looking or hip topics that haven’t been around long enough to have a bunch of speakers but which conference attendees might find interesting. In 2011, the Institutes were:

  • Content Strategy
  • Business Strategy
  • User Experience
  • Social Media

I can’t find a list of previous STC Summits on the STC website. If anyone knows the names of the program tracks for previous years (well, not too far back – let’s not get carried away), let me know. Leave a comment below or leave me a tweet (@BillAlbing).

Alyssa Fox sent me these other previous year track lists.

In 2006, they were called stems, and were:

  • Management
  • Professional Development/STC-Related Sessions
  • Theory, Research, Education, and Training
  • Tools and Technology
  • Usability and Information Design
  • Writing and Editing

In 2008 and 2009, the track names were:

  • Applying Research and Theory to Practice
  • Developing and Delivering Content
  • Designing and Assessing the User Experience
  • Developing Your Skills and Promoting Your Profession
  • Managing People, Projects, and Business
  • Producing and Publishing Information

So, some additional thoughts:

  1. Looks like the change from “Writing and Editing” to “Developing Content” may be cyclical. It has happened more than once.
  2. We have dropped the words “Theory” and “Research” from track names.
  3. “Producing and Publishing Information” has morphed into “Content Delivery”, “Web Design” and “Social Media”, I think.
  4. “Tools and Technology” has gone as an item to focus on by itself. We are not just users of tools, I guess. But part of me wonders if we shouldn’t retain something that is just about the “technical” in technical writing.
Posted in Conferences, Criticism, Profession, Professional Association | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Gauging Social Media

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Bill

I know that social media is sort of a soft topic for some companies – especially if you are not dealing with the general public. But with the rise of mobile devices and expectations that information should be available with as much immediacy as possible, I would guess that social media will increase in use, even if the “social” aspect is not relevant.

Yesterday I attended the local Raleigh Salesforce User Group meeting and got a taste of how the service (or support) arm of a company can deal with the influx of customer feedback from social media as a communications channel and the growth of brand perception in general through social media. So just as telephones and emails need to be monitored and responded to, so chat sessions, Google searches, blog posts, and Twitter feeds need to be analyzed and responded to, albeit in a different and appropriate way. Lee Pisacano, from Salesforce, gave us a good introduction to all this and explained that Salesforce is expanding their offerings to give us the tools to handle this.

Robin Callendar, also of Salesforce, spoke about responding to social media input (from customers and the public) as part of service and support with some pretty sophisticated tools that are now available since Salesforce bought out Radian6. He showed how their latest module gives you the ability to analyze social media in ways that I did not realize were possible. I learned that in an online chat session, the support person can see what you are typing as you are typing it – almost spooky because it’s not clear from the UI that it is presenting it to the listener at the other end. And I learned that you can do some pretty cool analytics on what’s out there in Twitter and blogs, rating the priority of the feedback on how many people online are being influenced by that feedback.

Bryan White of RegEd shared Pfizer’s Social Media Response Flowchart (originally developed by the U.S. Air Force). There was a lot of interest in that; I guess we’re all trying to figure out how to deal with social media.

Tricia (I think it was) shared how cool it was to be at Dreamforce – they had so many attendees that they had to close off some city blocks in San Francisco. I also chatted with Peter Stocks who works for Fairsail, a company that makes a human resource and recruitment software package, about these trends in software – how stuff is moving to the cloud and Salesforce seems to be doing things correctly. Salesforce does cool software deployment and adds modules of functionality as needed. Their screens seem to have a lot going on, but I’m not sure I’d say it’s cluttered. Busy, yes. I wonder if they’ll work on keeping the interface clean and simple and hide more stuff as the user base grows and functionality grows.

There were just shy of 40 people attending. Thanks to Lenovo for hosting the meeting. The catering of Mediterranean food for our lunch was excellent – I’m going to have to get the name of that caterer. (Sorry, no photos this time. The room was a bit dark and I’m not the best with a camera.)

Posted in cloud solutions, Social Networking, User Experience, user group meetings | Tagged , , | 1 Comment