Book Recommendation: Karen Schriver Responds

[Karen Schriver <ks0e+ -at- ANDREW -dot- CMU -dot- EDU>]

In response to Carl Stieren's commentary of Friday August 28 1998:

Thanks Carl Stieren and Brad Mehlenbacher for your reactions to my book!
Carl, I agree that we need to characterize the current state of affairs
in our field. But I don't know if the phrase "minimalism plus" captures
the current state, since the practices you cite (high on bullet points,
etc.) don't really grow out of a theory of minimalism, per se, but more
from a constellation of ad hoc practices that work sometimes but fail
miserably in others. I'm thinking of the many texts that are high on
bullet points and low on content. I'm still a big advocate of content
and that it's functions should infuse design decisions.

The goal I had in my book was to show that our field DOES indeed have a
history, and a pretty interesting one at that. Since many people we work
with trivialize our enterprise, part of my mission in the front end of
the book was political; i wanted people to see that we (information
designers...i'm caving in on my former insistence on document design)
are a real presence in the world of business and the academy. As such, I
tried to show the evolution of the field up to the mid 90s. Now it will
be up to someone else to characterize the 90s and beyond. Any takers? :-)

karen
 ------ ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS -----
> Date:    Fri, 28 Aug 1998 17:06:00 -0400
> From:    Carl Stieren <STIEREN -at- SIMWARE -dot- COM>
> Subject: Re: Book recommendation: Karen Schriver
>
> (The original post by Debbie Pesach was on July 31, but I just got
back from holidays and I'm catching up with a month's TECHWR-L
summaries.)
>
> Dear Debbie and other TECHWR-Lers:
>
> I heartily recommend Dynamics in Document Design for a vast, deep look
at documentation from the early 20th Century to the 1970s/80s. It is an
> excellent book, well designed, congisant of culture, politics, trends
and the entire context in which document design fits. Buy this book if
you want to know more than the mere "how-to" of the current phase of
documentation.
> The only thing I really wanted, which Karen did not include, was a
section on the current era in documentation, one I would call
"minimalism plus", the current form of documentation, which I believe is
Web-influenced, short on text, high on bullet points, procedure lists,
concept topics, user-involvement, and often including tutorial in the
text.
> I hadn't had the courage to pose this question to Karen directly, but
your post, asking whether anyone recommended this book, smoked me out. I
will also ask Karen whether she believes this is the current stage.
>
> - Carl Stieren
> Senior Information Developer
> Simware, Inc.
> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
>
>  ------ ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS -----
>
> >Date:    Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:06:39 +0300
> >From:    KIBBUTZ HANNATON <hannaton -at- ACTCOM -dot- CO -dot- IL>
> >Subject: Book recommendation: Karen Schriver
> >
> >I have a chance to buy a copy of "Dynamics in Document Design :
Creating Texts for Readers" by Karen A. Schriver.
> >I would appreciate some advice here. Does anyone have any comments
about this book? Would you recommend it?  Why and why not?
> >Please reply directly to me to save cyberspace. ;~)
> >
> >Debbie Pesach
> >Kibbutz Hannaton
> >hannaton -at- actcom -dot- co -dot- il>
> ------------------------------


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