Editor’s Note: For readers who want to enjoy Tech Writer This Week for June 13 via RSS without all the formatting issues, we’ve made it a bit easier by posting the introductory content here, and a link to the Storify curated content.
In my day job as a sole technical writer, I don’t consider myself an artist. Content creator, sure. But artist? Nah.
Alan Porter (writingassist.com) has an interesting take on the technical publishing process and believes that I, as a lone writer, am functioning as an artist because another writer would do things another way. An intriguing premise. I agree with Alan, but with reservations.
Elsewhere in Technical Communication, Larry Kunz (sdicorp.com) looks at the other side of the coin and describes how “emotional technical writing” helps build a positive brand experience. Michelle Corbin (techeditors.wordpress.com) discusses how rhetoric is related to technical editing. And Eric Sedor (shoap.com) compares technical writing to, of all things, Moby-Dick (written by Herman Melville). I loved this comparison because I did Moby-Dick for my master’s thesis.
Nothing stays the same in User Experience, including Gmail, which has rolled out new features. Kevin Goldberg (ux.walkme.com) walks us through the new Gmail user experience. Baruch Sachs (uxmatters.com) talks about practicing great UX consulting and how to deal with suggestions from people who don’t know as much about user experience as you do. Mike Evanier (newsfromme.com) discusses being lost in a horribly designed automated phone system for a doctor’s office. Sound familiar to anyone?
Under our Content Strategy banner, Mike Thompson (econtentmag.com) wonders if content curators are the new editors. Michael Brenner (b2bmarketinginsider.com) shares eight questions you can use to help define your content strategy. Speaking of content, it seems like we are still trying to define content curation, because Heidi Cohen (heidicohen.com) has gathered 19 different definitions of curation for your perusal. Enjoy!
In Career and Life, Nicole Nguyen (readwrite.com) gives us a bunch of reasons to switch to Firefox, my favorite one being that I can decide how securely I want to browse the web. Linda Coles (socialmediaexaminer.com) tells us how to use the new LinkedIn Contacts feature. If you don’t have it yet, all LinkedIn members soon will. Andrew Martonik (androidcentral.com) clues us in on how to deal with contact images in the new Gmail.
