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May, 2005
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Review of WinWriters
by Kit Brown, VP Programs, STC-SRC Chapter
For the April meeting, I provided a summary of the Winwriter's
conference, which was held in Las Vegas, NV March 20-23. Winwriters is
a commercial conference that focuses on user assistance.
Here are some of the things I learned (note this is a somewhat
random compilation of ideas, but perhaps some of them will pique your
interest):
Trends
The following trends appeared during the conference and
were discussed by the resident pundits during a trends panel discussion:
- Streaming Development Model: More and more software companies are
moving toward continuous release and pushing updates to customers using
a subscription pricing model. This shift has huge implications for technical
communication processes.
- Embedded help/improved UI: Users are becoming ever more sophisticated,
and software applications are maturing. The real differentiator is ease
of use, rather than additional functionality. (Think about it-for e.g.,
most accounting software does the same thing, Intuit usually wins out
because it is infinitely more user friendly than other similar products.)
Instead of developing traditional documentation, technical communicators
will participate in UI design and development, usability and other areas.
- Multilingual support standard: International customers are becoming
more demanding for seeing products in the local language. To compete
in a global marketplace, applications must support multiple languages,
particularly for applications in highly regulated industries. English
is not the native language for most people using the Web and for many
of the people using your product. Technical communicators need to design
and develop content with this in mind.
- eLearning on the rise: Some pundits are predicting that face-to-face
corporate training will be eliminated in favor of elearning. This has
implications in content management, structured documentation development,
and so on.
- Users' base competency on the rise: As users become more sophisticated,
their information needs change. We need to re-evaluate how to best reach
these audiences.
- Structured Doc: Structured documentation enables you to truly single
source. Instead of writing a whole manual or set of online help topics,
technical communicators will be writing content modules that will be
repurposed in many ways and contexts. This shift completely changes
the way we work. Editorial processes and change management become increasingly
important.
- Database-driven content: Content retrieval based on individual user
needs will become the norm. To accomplish this, content modules will
be stored in databases instead of books or help, and will be served
up as the user queries the system.
- XML: XML's popularity continues to rise as companies realize that
they can develop and maintain significantly more information using fewer
people, and have a more effective way of supporting the customer.
- Improved search capabilities: Content is useless if people can find
it and work with it. Improved search capabilities help alleviate this
situation. Metadata development and indexing skills become vital.
- HATs disappear: Help Authoring Tools will go the way of the dinosaur
as more and more people implement XML, which can be published to myriad
formats with a push of button (assuming that the XSLTs are working correctly).
Macromedia has killed RoboHelp, for example. Some of the senior developers
have formed MadCap Software and are developing a new tool that incorporates
some XML support.
- Help standards for web-based applications: As web-based applications
mature, we are staring to see best practices and standards emerging.
- Collaboration tools: Distributed teams are becoming the norm, so collaboration
tools become vitally important to managing projects and maintaining
team synergy. Wikis are the new craze for collaborative development…
Resources
Here are some places to go for more information:
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