RE: waking up to the world of Technical Writing

Subject: RE: waking up to the world of Technical Writing
From: Lippincott Richard J Contr ESC/NI <Richard -dot- Lippincott -at- hanscom -dot- af -dot- mil>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:33:15 -0400


Mark Baker said:

>On the contrary, it is important to understand that the UI is peripheral to
>the user experience. You don't drive down the highway with your eyes glued
>to the instrument panel -- you watch the road.

One of the problems with our profession is that there are so many different things to document that any one analogy breaks down very quickly. Mark's right, when you're driving down the road you don't focus on the instrument panel. On the other hand, pilots flying aircraft on IFR through clouds at night -do- keep their eyes on the instruments and don't dare take their eyes off them.

In some cases, the UI is as Mark says it should be: not central to the user's experience. In other cases and other systems, the UI -is- the user's experience. Unless I misunderstand what Mark is saying, if your user is configuring a VPN on a telecom network, then from the user's point of view the UI is essentially indistinguishable from the user's experience.

--Rick Lippincott
Titan Corporation
Bedford, MA

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