Re: Doc Design and Conventions

Subject: Re: Doc Design and Conventions
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 08:45:21 -0800

I'm not a SW document specialist, having never worked for any company whose main
product was software that wasn't being used to control some kind of a physical
system, but all the companies I've ever worked for or with that produced
software never had any "UI engineers," and used an open bug/improvement system
in which anyone who was involved with a project was able to file a bug report or
improvement suggestion and all were evaluated and resolved. The tech writers
were often some of the major UI commenters, but it wasn't considered anything
more than part of being a member of the development team.

I think I would tend to look askance at any working environment in which writers
(or anyone else in the development team) were either not allowed to do this or
were expected to be the primary people responsible for doing it. And I'd run
like hell from one in which the writers were not considered part of the
development team at all.

Gene Kim-Eng



----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hood" <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>
My highly subjective take on the history of tech writers' involvement in UI
design: In their downsizing over the years, companies got rid of all their
usability engineers. The regular developers took over UI design but they usually
weren't trained to pay attention to usability concerns, and they were pressured
to get the product out the door as soon as possible.

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References:
Re: Doc Design and Conventions: From: Keith Hood

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