A Mini-Workshop: Grassroots Documentation Testing

My presentation proposal for the STC 2011 Summit was accepted! It’s a mini-workshop in the Usability track called “Grassroots Documentation Testing.” I just got the email from Lloyd Tucker, STC’s Deputy Executive Director. I’ve mostly interacted with Lloyd over email, but he’s so thoroughly pleasant that it’s especially enjoyable to get a congratulations from him.

So, yay.

I’ll be leading an exercise and a discussion, and I’ll follow up with a blog post to summarize our ideas.

For the exercise portion, we’ll practice writing scenarios to test user assistance content on hypothetical co-workers. Then we’ll have a brainstorming session to share success stories and discuss solutions for the most critical challenges to do-it-yourself documentation testing.

Hats tipping all over the place to Steve Krug and Tom Johnson.

When I got a copy of Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug, our tech comm department adapted Krug’s do-it-yourself website testing method to test documentation, with an important variable–we tested on co-workers. The resulting benefits were not the ones I expected, nor were the challenges quite the same as the ones covered in Krug’s book.

The reading I’ve done as a novice helps me justify the “why” for testing. Now I want to provide a forum to discuss the “how.”

This discussion is an opportunity to supplement the expert resources on usability with some grassroots collaboration. I’m not an expert, but as a group, we’ll work through an exercise to demonstrate some challenges, then discuss solutions for the most severe issues; a debriefing à la Krug. After the Summit, I’ll blog our group solutions. (This part of the session was inspired by Tom Johnson’s collaborative posts over at IdRatherBeWriting.com.)

I think this will resonate with tech writers and usability novices who need to overcome some obstacles and start somewhere with testing.

Sometimes technical communicators come into a department that has established formats and standards, and it can be difficult to find a point of entry for improving upon those. Or, basic audience analysis may be lacking from a tech comm department’s processes and body of knowledge. In some environments (and also depending on one’s experience level), it can be difficult to make the case for professional usability testing, or for direct access to users. Employers may be more open to low-budget, internal testing.

I’m expecting this to interest creators of users assistance who are already testing their docs or those who want to know how to get started. I expect a mix experience levels in the tech comm field.

What I’m hoping to accomplish:

Otherwise known as the “key learning objectives” part of the session proposal.

• Gain awareness of the process and challenges of writing test scenarios for user assistance
• Gain awareness of what is working and not working for our colleagues
• Increased confidence in the ability to test our content
• Increased proficiency in using collaboration as a problem-solving tool
• Produce a list of solutions that can be shared with the STC community

Hooray! Also, feedback.

What would attract you to this session? What would make you skip it? Do you have any tips on presenting? Do you have a testing story? Please share down in the comments area.

The OG Word. Also: Kill Your Darlings?

Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium posted a response to my post about whether we need STC. The post generated much discussion, some of it about whether STC has an “old guard” and a “new guard,” and whether STC, itself, is “old guard.” And now I am officially not typing either of those phrases again for at least six months. Sarah, good call on the lazy terminology.

When I wrote the post as a response to Tom Johnson’s post, I envisioned an empowered group resisting change partly because they benefit from the status quo, and because change is so hard, and because the leadership is already working hard on what they’ve decided is a priority. I was thinking of resistance and lack of agility in an organization, not in particular people.

I am thinking of my frustration at what feels like a same-old approach—top-down and disjointed. I am 100% sure this is not the result of a deficiency in the individuals in leadership, whatever their ages.

I understand what a year in survival mode looks like. We might as well have not had a Suncoast chapter planning meeting last year. I had no clear idea of how to convert the input into actual volunteers, and the president, treasurer, and I spent all our time just arranging for a roof and good speaker once a month.

That was enough to get us through the year and attract a dynamite nominations guy, who in turn recruited us a full admin council for this year. But if you want to talk about why our web site is in appalling condition, I might not have much patience for you. We haven’t gotten that far yet, that’s why.

If the Society is resuming other iniatives now, though, why not take more input about which ones we’d like to see? Why not test prototypes of the new social platform on us? There may be good reasons why I haven’t seen that. What might those reasons be?

STC is a 501(c)3, as discussed in Leadership Day. So the Society is supposed to benefit the profession rather than directly benefiting the members. With that in mind, when I suggest regional conferences, I’m suggesting regional conferences that take organizational effort and dollars from the Society, not from the chapters. There might be ways to do this without losing quality in the areas that matter most to members. I would happily lose the recording of sessions, for example, in exchange for wifi.

Aaargh, the wifi!(Shakes fist at sky.) I’m using an easy example here. But seriously, how about polling us about which parts of a conference are important to us? I don’t want to be asked to pay a higher registration fee until I’m convinced that we’ve put the work into finding out what everyone wants in a conference now. There were evaluation sheets for sessions this year. If you attended the full conference. I went to a workshop, and there’s no form for that. Never mind the people who didn’t go at all.

I think we have the same issue with the people who decided that after how-ever-many years, STC wasn’t for them. Yes, you get what you put into it. But sometimes people need help figuring out what to put in. I’m reminded of a phrase I hate: “user error.”

Do we really have no leverage to negotiate with the Hyatt? What if we had a super low-budget conference somewhere else next year just to boycott them; just to show them we meant business? It worries me to think that the Society is not light enough on its feet to pull something like that off. Am I mistaken in this perception?

I understand that it’s not as easy for vendors as a single conference would be. It’s easier for thousands of members, though. What’s the balance of the two that benefits the profession?

Dueling Pianos: Do We Need STC?

During the STC 2010 conference, tech comm blogger Tom Johnson interviewed attendees and presenters between sessions, and he’s been uploading those videos to his site.

I picked two to watch consecutively: his interview with usability consultant Whitney Hess; then his discussion with Char James-Tanny and Bill Swallow about the pay-for-content model for online content. Although the two talks were not strictly on the same topic, I think they each provided insight on where STC can improve and why it’s not irrelevant, yet (in my humble estimation).

Johnson’s questions to Hess were about the “old guard,” the generation who established and defined our field, vs. the “new guard,” the emerging generation that is perhaps more comfortable with social media and other new methods. Hess suggested that the old guard will make themselves irrelevant, and that the new folk should go around unnecessary barriers set up by them. She raised the question of whether we need such formal associations as STC.

In the Tanny/ Swallow interview, Johnson asked for their thoughts on the pay-for-content model: can it work and does it have value online, where so much can be obtained for free? Both suggested that exclusive, vetted content can be worth paying for online.

I think that the reasons why paid online content makes sense in some cases are the some of the same reasons that STC and its conference make sense: the exclusivity, the curation, and the vetting add value to the association, as well.

1. The formality of the association adds to employer perceptions of us, and having STC associated with a webinar or class I want to get paid for makes it much more likely to get approved. I’ll venture a guess that this is more valuable to some of us than others. There are many consultants in STC, but meanwhile, I’m still finagling invitations to the right meetings at my job.
2. I think our publications are excellent. For a long time, they were one of the biggest benefits of my membership.
3. Speaking of quality products like our publications, there is something to be said for the level of planning that goes into our activities. The TCBoK has a 15-page charter. I don’t think that’s too much for a project of that magnitude, and it’s a good precedent for our work projects. Not everything is a complex project that needs that level of planning, but it’s a skill to know the difference.
4. Chapter meetings have been enormously beneficial, and the same goes for the conferences: the programs get a 90ish % from me, overall, and the people I’ve met have given me an education in tech comm. I think I wouldn’t get that depth of knowledge if all of tech comm was an un-conference with people my age.
5. The organization is sandbox for the work world and a place to prove ourselves. We get to practice audience analysis, and UX, and web development, and everything else by serving this community. Not to mention selling books to it, in some cases. But . . .

I absolutely think we need to cut the unnecessary trappings fast. Bylaws: why are they pages upon pages? It’s intimidating and unusable, and it dates us. No wifi? Unacceptable—cut something else, period. A new, monolithic social platform for all members? Where was my survey? And maybe it’s time to start thinking about funding more regional conferences with lighter footprints rather than one, large conference. If the TCBoK will be paid content, why are we holding our hands out for content like we’re taking charity?

We’ve got to have more of these discussions at the Suncoast chapter level, so don’t think I’m leaving myself out of this. For example, I got some (gentle) criticism about having a fancy catered dinner at the Doubletree for our competition awards banquet, and then handing out paper certificates (with professional graphics, thanks very much) to the winners. In past years we had fancier plaques. I’m still figuring out where to hang mine, but it sure is pretty.

Meanwhile, we have sizable minority of unemployed members, and you’ll find nary a developer at our meetings, even the ones about XML and content strategy. Nor do we venture out to represent STC at the dozens of dev-focused meetups in our area.

Hess’s point about our siloed professions was a good one. Our industry relies on tech, and it intermingles with the UX community, among others. For example, during the STC Usability and User Experience SIG meeting, I learned that it was a couple of STC folk who founded UPA (can’t find a link for this, unfortunately). I think we can take cues from some of the more tech-y conferences: partly to save money on things that are less important to the “new guard” (sorry, can’t type that without air quotes), like centerpieces and centralized, mega-conferences, and partly to facilitate cross-over, which can get everybody more jobs.

At the UUX business meeting, we identified some goals for this year that I think could be good for the Society, in general: finding our synergy with other communities: with the larger UX community, with other SIGs, with the TCBoK. Why do people join the STC and the SIGs and not other groups, or in addition to other groups? Are we a gateway into those other communities, a supplement to them, or do people need our particular focus on docs? Where do we fit in?

#stc10

The Twitter feed on the conference site was addictive and tortuous. Like wiggling a tooth. I was crashing the conference; attending some networking events, gathering requirements for the UUX site overhaul, and attending one of the pre-conference workshops, but not the conference at large. Since I was staying with family, my evenings and non-SIG times were spent meeting my cousins’ babies and talking about their business.

I loved that, but I really missed the conference experience I had last year. Last year, I met almost every STC person on my Twitter list and asked questions related to every project I had going. I even attended the awards banquet, because chapter-member Karen Bachmann became an Associate Fellow.

Still, it was absolutely worth being there in person, even on that piece-meal basis. As much as I wanted to dive into the #stc10 feed and find every tweetup, I had to focus on a just few things, which is probably good practice for me.

The Suncoast Chapter

During the morning session of Leadership Day, I picked up some information about legal requirements for chapter officers. Dear volunteers: I didn’t say anything about this when we recruited you, but we’ve got to come up with a conflict-of-interest policy, whistle-blower policy, and a new tax form. And, we have to watch our asses, because we’re liable. But the tradeoff is we can ask the Society for money, which I didn’t know before this weekend. “Zero-based budgeting doesn’t mean zero money.” Rah-rah, please RT.

I’m happy to know that we can build conference attendance into our budget next year, and I’m proud that we made it through this last year on our own financial resources, but I’m annoyed by how hit-or-miss it is getting information about chapter resources and responsibilities.

For example: I think Leadership Day is important enough that new officers should either get sponsored to attend or it should be available in e-learning modules that get a lot of PR with new officers. If I hadn’t been so hyped about attending the conference last year, I still might not know about Leadership Day. There was a woman there who had been volunteering for 13 years without having heard of it. Ridiculous.

I know STC has had to concentrate on making it through the budget shortfall, and I fully expected other improvements to be deferred. Now that they’ve made it through that crisis, I hope streamlined communication is a priority.

The UUUUX

At this point, the biggest reason I’m involved with the UUX SIG is because I want to be in on the site redesign. Yes, I also want to know how to do usability testing, and user analysis, but I really want to learn what all is involved in shipping a website.

During the conference, on Twitter, a usability consultant (not an STC member) who was presenting, Whitney Hess, asked about our SIG name. She thought the UUX acronym was strange, and possibly at odds with the universal handle, UX. Why does the SIG name, Usability and User Experience, call out user experience but not other parts of the discipline, such as information architecture?

At the business meeting, Ginny Redish and Whitney Quesenbery gave some insight into the history behind the name. When the SIG was named in 1992, the name choice was intended to expand the thinking about usability into the area of interaction design. While it’s true that we could also specifically call out other disciplines as pieces of usability, we also have to end the name somewhere. We have an IA SIG, so that’s one place we draw a little line between the two. Does it make sense? We can talk about it.

That’s a big part of planning the new site: identifying our members. Why are they here as opposed to (or in addition to) some other usability organization? Some of our members have gone on to be leaders in other UX organizations–should part of our focus be connecting members with those organizations?

That research will help support part of a larger goal for the SIG this year: finding our synergy with UPA and the larger UX community, with the TC BoK, and with other SIGs.

Teh Content Strategicals

My employer paid for me to attend the Architecting Content workshop by Rahel Bailie. I asked for the UX workshop first, because I thought it would be easier to justify, but that one got changed to a regular session, so I resubmitted my request and asked for Rahel’s workshop, and it got approved. Boy, are they in for it.

I can hardly sit still during a content strategy presentation. I want to jump up and get my manager, and my director, and the CEO, and make them watch the session. I want to run home and practice my ROI and IRR justifications in front of the mirror before I forget how the presenter delivered them. I want to draw pictures on the white board.

Perhaps what I need now in order to move forward in this area is not more content strategy sessions, but deep breathing exercises.

I asked Rahel how I can use this information now, while I’m an employee rather than a consultant. It’s not easy to tie content goals to corporate goals when I am not privy to corporate goals. She explained that I can help my manager do it. I give the information to my manager and she passes it up the chain. One of the ways that Rahel got to be consultant was by being good at speaking the executives’ language. She kept being asked to explain to the execs how the initiates supported the business.

Taking a deep breath…

Other Blog Posts About the Conference

Read these; they’re good:

• STC 2010 Day Four Super Summary
• Trust and Transparency #stc10

Crashing the STC Conference

I haven’t registered for STC’s annual conference, but I bought my plane ticket a couple of months ago. Well, technically, I have registered. But it’s an a la carte-style registration. I let Membership Manager Julia O’Connor know I wanted to attend Leadership Day and the UUX SIG breakfast (thank you, Julia!), and my employer cut me a check for a pre-conference workshop. But that’s it—after the UUX business lunch on Monday, I’ll be shopping with my aunt.

My sister had a destination wedding two weeks ago, and I made it into a vacation. When I decided to do that, the trade off was no conference registration. I canceled my conference hotel registration and instead rented a car so that I can stay with family outside of Dallas. So why am I even bothering?

The obvious thing is that I can still see some people who will be in town from around the world—I can still network a bit. I’m involved in the site redesign for the Usability and User Experience special interest group, and it will be a relief to share things face-to-face with project members as well as the SIG at large. I’ll also have lunch or otherwise meet up with other people that I usually only talk to online.

I’m not doing much more than showing my face this year, but I’m setting the expectation for myself that I will be there every year even if it’s not easy.

And that’s what this is mainly about, for me: I’m forming a good habit. Although I’m still an employee, I’m teaching myself clever business/vacation trip planning. Learning how to do conferences on the cheap, and practicing how to make the most of them. Business cards, a list of questions to ask, materials to share with the UUX SIG about the site project—all of that kind of preparation will be routine before I know it. For some tips, here’s a great series of articles by my friend Charlene about how to get the full benefits of professional conferences.