Tech Writer This Week for March 14, 2013

Tech Writer This Week – March 14, 2013 – TechWhirl

TechWhirl’s Weekly Roundup of the best technical communication, content, user experience, and technical writing posts on the web.

Storified by · Wed, Mar 13 2013 17:00:01

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Tech Writer This Week brings you commentary on big subjects (not those second level headings or bullet points, but the BIG subjects) this week: fear, creativity, confidence, awkwardness, simplicity, and the screw up. All tied together in a nice neat package of stuff from around the web. We start off with Technical Communication and fear. Technical Communicators are afraid. Rick Lippincott dragged our fear into the light and rattled its cage during his STC 2012 Summit Lightening Talk. This is great stuff, and worth a look now (even ten months later). Click the link to hear what he has to say, and then let us know if  you agree. Bill Kershbaum (intextwriting.com) tells us what to do if your users hate (yes, *hate*) the user guide you wrote. And Ugur Akinci has information on two technical writers who successfully migrated into creative writing. You can do it, too, if you want to.

Wandering over into Content Strategy, we find the Guerrilla Editor (guerrilla-editor.blogspot.com) telling us there is no such thing as a finished website. And Mark Tilly (hbusiness2community.com) says content curation builds writing confidence.

In User Experience, Andrew Zusman (uxbooth.com) talks about how awkward ordinary keyboards are for those who have only one hand — or one arm. Cheryl Platz (huffingtonpost.com), describes how even small changes can make big differences for your users.  Jay Selway (uxmag.com) discusses why simplicity can be a rather tricky goal to achieve. And Frank Guo (uxmatters.com) delivers the long awaited part 3 of his series on the Four Elements of User Experience.

This week, the Career and Life grab bag offers a ton of troubleshooting help straight from Microsoft, courtesy of TechSupportAlert (techsupportalert.com). Ilya Pozin (techritesolutions.wordpress.com) clues us in on how to recover after screwing up in the office. I’m bookmarking this one, because you never know. And Susan Harkins (techrepublic.com) discusses 10 features of Office you really should know about.

Technical Communication
STC 2012 Summit Lightning Talk "A Fear Stalks Our Profession"Rick Lippincott
How to Get Your Users to Read the ManualResearch shows that your customers really do read the manual. And yet, your tech support staff are pulling their hair out answering the s…
Two Technical Writers Who Crossed Over Successfully to Creating Writing | Technical Communication Center© Ugur Akinci I always said it: technical writing is not only an excellent way for writers to put food on the table and send kids through…
Content Strategy
guerrilla-editor: Content strategy: there’s no such thing as a finished website"There’s no such thing as a finished website," says content strategist Sue Davis, "Content has a lifecycle – you can’t just fling it up a…
Content Curation Leads to Content Creation | Business 2 CommunityPopular Today in Business: You know you need to start writing content for that new marketing site or blog, as well as your social media a…
User Experience
The Sound of One Hand Typing – UX Booth | UX BoothBy Andrew Zusman Category Social Without a second thought, most people can sit down at a computer keyboard and begin to type. For a perso…
What is UX Design?We go by many names — interaction designers, user experience designers, human-computer interaction specialists — but our work is the sa…
The Complexity of Simplicity | UX MagazineEvery project I’ve worked on in my 17-year career has had one thing in common. At some point someone says, "It should be simple." But wha…
More Than Usability: The Four Elements of User Experience, Part III :: UXmattersBy Frank Guo "Understanding the relative importance of the four elements is critical to correctly prioritizing product design and develop…
Career and Life
Loads of Troubleshooting Help From Microsoft, All In One PlaceIf you’re having a problem on your PC, you probably start by searching for the solution with Google. However, a better route (or somethin…
Made A Work Mistake? How to Bounce BackWe all make mistakes. It’s part of being human. But when we mess up at work, we have much more at stake. If we make mistakes in our perso…
10 underused Office features | TechRepublicThere’s a saying that 80 percent of users will use only 20 percent of an application’s features. This is probably true of most Office use…

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