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Subject:Re: TECHWR-L Digest - 1 Jun 1993 From:"Focus on 3 things: Quality, Quality, Quality" <raven -at- RHETOR -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 2 Jun 1993 09:50:51 EDT
> When someone asks you what you do for a living, do you _really_ say,
> "I'm a Technical Communicator?"
YEs, I do, except when I say I'm an "Information Designer".
(or ." depending on your style guide)
I guess I'm pretty militant. I don't think most people realize there's
a lot more to being a "technical writer" than writing, so I call
myself a technical communicator or something similar.
I define info design as a particular stage of the technical
communication process-the design stage when I might be talking
with/interviewing/surveying customers and writing an information plan
(no, not docplan) the info plan contains plans for writing not only
the hardcopy and online documentation, but also any training
--lecture-lab or tutorial or embedded--and EVEN the user
interface (if it's GUI) and ANYTHING ELSE that might fall under the
rubric of user info--like, any info that technical support people might
use on a 1-800 hone line or on a customer visit to fix something, or a
script for an advertising video or a script for a demo that
salespeople could give.
Of course, job titles are long where I work--I work with
electrical engineers, field test administrators, and grahpical user
interface architects. ("architect" is an really 'in' word where I work
right now). hummm...
Maybe tomorrow I'll be a "technical and business
communication architect"... :)
Mary Beth Raven
Raven -at- usable -dot- dec -dot- com
