Checking code (was: Software engineer tech. writers? )

[Gene Kim-Eng]

What Carla idescribed is consistency, not usability.
Keeping products internally consistent is certainly part
of good usability design, but only a small part.  Asking
users what they want is also a part, but again only a
part, because many users haven't the foggiest idea what
makes a design "usable" for them, much less what will
make it so for a majority of targeted users other than
themselves.  Outside of the software design silo, 
usability is called "Human Factors," and is yet another
field that technical writers cannot just hop into after
spending a night at a Holiday Inn Express.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Borokowski" <athloi at yahoo.com>
> One of the reasons I think technical writers should branch out into
> usability is that such things often go unnoticed, and fixing them is a
> skill that directly relates to the skillset of communicating with
> users. Users need consistency, not "creativity" in randomly naming
> buttons, commands, and so on. I see inconsistency quite a bit, and most
> of my comments returned to engineers are fixes in that area.
> 
> --- "Martinek, Carla" <CMartinek at zebra.com> wrote:
> 
>> Years ago I was documenting a program for a mobile radio computer. 
>> As I
>> went through the program, I started noticing that the buttons used
>> for
>> various functions (think DOS application screens) varied from screen
>> to
>> screen.  For example, Print might be F6 on one screen, but F8 on
>> another, and so on.