Tech Writers are not Usability Experts by default?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

TechComm Dood observed: <<I read the snippet below [the techwhirlers 
(or usability experts)] in two ways... one way suggests that either the 
tech writers OR the usability experts help the engineers, and the other 
way (which I'm contesting) that the tech writers who ARE usability 
experts help the engineers.>>

Good point; I try not to use "or" to mean "the following phrase is a 
synonym", but of course you couldn't know that, since it's a standard 
idiom in North American English. My intended meaning was "writers, 
usability experts, or both". If you've got usability or interface 
design _experts_, they're clearly the ones who should do the work, 
possibly with our help.

If you don't have such experts, we writers are the first ones to hit 
the wall and bounce hard. Any time you say to yourself "I have no idea 
what this is supposed to do" or "I could document this in 10 fewer 
pages if you made the following simple changes", you know there's an 
interface problem. Even if you're not an expert in the theory, you're 
still the first person other than the developers to try the product, 
and if you have trouble (despite having worked with these same 
developers for however long and thereby gained some insight into their 
twisty little minds <g>), the actual users will have even more trouble.

<<Technical Writers are not usability experts. Not by a long shot.>>

Some of us are, at least to the extent that any such thing as a 
usability expert exists. But the more important point is that we're 
user advocates in all cases: if we can't figure something out, despite 
having access to the developers, and if we have to describe something 
in an ineffective way because it works ineffectively, we've found a 
problem that needs fixing. That at least makes us usability amateurs.

<<But for the most part, your "crazy idea" is how we conduct project 
cycles here. :-)>>

Count your blessings. I'd be richer this year if I hadn't fired a 
client who insisted on producing crappy interfaces (ignoring my advice 
for obvious improvements), asking me to use late-1980s-era technology 
to document the products, and constantly changing the interface without 
telling me so I never knew what was up to date and what wasn't.

I didn't go freelance to be forced to work for cretins and produce 
materials I'd be ashamed to put in my portfolio. I chose this life so I 
could help people produce usable products--or superior documentation to 
accompany them. I told the client exactly this, though far more 
diplomatically, then passed them on to a local colleague who could do a 
much better job than I could under those circumstances and who would 
enjoy doing it. Everyone seems happy, except the poor users of the 
product.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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