Re: The coming predominance of user experience and technical communications

[Laura Lemay <lemay -at- lauralemay -dot- com>]

Chris Borokowski wrote:
> It seems to me this is the kind of role technical communicators/writers
> should get involved with. 

I've been hearing that argument for 20 years.

In my experience there just isn't a lot of movement between tech writing 
and UE.  I don't know if this is because tech writing tends to be a 
marginalized profession to begin with, if we don't stand up for the 
breadth of our skills, or if there's some grand conspiracy by The Man to 
keep us down.  I've seen a whole lot more cross-pollination between 
graphic design and UE...mostly it seems because the designers arealready 
there touching parts of the interface so it is less of a leap for them 
and there is less management persuading required.

These days those enlightened companies that have a dedicated UE role at 
all seem to be hiring UE engineers with actual UE degrees.  Now that 
there are more universities offering more degree programs in UE and 
graduating more people all the time I suspect that trend will continue.

Frankly I think the ship has sailed on this one and we tech writers did 
not board when we had the chance.

Laura


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Laura Lemay     Killer of Trees     lemay % lne.com    lemay % gmail.com
http://www.lauralemay.com                     http://blog.lauralemay.com
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