FW: Usability Testing

[Lynn Perry <clperry -at- WALLDATA -dot- COM>]

> Barbara Karst-Sabin wrote
(heavily snipped)
... the real driving force in all of this is marketing.  They sell the
product as soon
> as someone has ... begun brainstorming.  The engineers are then driven
> to provide something that will ... do the job that marketing has
> promised, and as quickly as is humanly possible.  Quicker.
>
> Meanwhile, the tech writers are there madly trying to develop a doc plan
> on
> something that doesn't exist and are then forced to begin preparing the
> documentation when there are still numerous, significant issues regarding
> the
> products actual functionality still to be decided.
>
<snip> My attempts to query things
> that obviously weren't going to work were met with annoyance, at the very
> best
> of times. <snip> so that the developers could be forced to iron out the
> wrinkles
> the writers had already shown them.  To add insult to injury, the problems
> were categorized as "documentation faults"!
...

Well said. I have encountered exactly this situation in most of the tech
writing positions I've had in the past 10 years. It's a struggle to maintain
professionalism in this environment, though the position I now hold boasts
some outstanding developers, many of whom actually ask for techpubs input
during design.

I wonder how prevalent this situation is. It seems ubiquitous. Is it?
LyP
clperry -at- walldata -dot- com
My opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Wall Data International and
vice versa.