WritersUA 2009: Day 3

I attended these sessions today, the last day of the 17th Annual WritersUA Conference:

• Double Scoop Case Studies: Editing: Using content models to increase the effectiveness of your content and Assessing the value of editing and its effect on the bottom line: Both parts of this session were delivered by technical editors from Microsoft — Richard Carey and Terry Lee respectively. I didn’t get a lot from the first part, but the second part was great. Terry said that at a cost of 35c (US) per word per language for translation, reducing the number of words while retaining clarity was hugely important. For example, for just 10 languages, the translation cost per word is $3.50. On a 100,000 word document, if a good editor can reduce the word count by some 10,000 words, Microsoft saves some $35,000 in translation costs over those 10 languages. That’s a powerful bottom line figure. The best take-away from this session: “Clarity trumps EVERYTHING else!”
• Double Scoop Case Studies: Web 2.0: Using Microsharing Tools like Twitter to Build Better UA (Charlene Kingston) and Using Forums and FAQs to Support Members of Flickr (Zack Sheppard): Another two part session. Having just joined Twitter the other day and not really having any sort of handle on it yet, I was interested to hear what Charlene had to say about the business uses of Twitter. Her slides and her talk were compelling, so I’m not as much of a skeptic as I was a week ago. She’s also written an ebook ‘primer’ on Twitter to go with her talk, so I’ll be downloading that to read on the plane trip home. Her blog has quite a few articles on using Twitter, so I’ll be checking that out too (http://blog.crowinfodesign.com/category/twitter/). Charlene’s Twitter ID is CrowInfoDesign. Zack’s part of this session wasn’t as relevant to me, and so I didn’t get as much out of it. It was also his first time speaking, but he kept his nerves pretty well under control. I was blown away by the Flickr stats — some 3 billion (or was it 6?) photos are stored in Flickr and some 5000 images are uploaded every minute. Zack’s role is coordinating the user forums, the FAQs, and the ‘canned responses’ to emails that the Support people use.
• Career Strategies for Embedded UA: This was the panel session I was on, with such illuminaries as Paul Mueller (UserAid), Matthew Ellison (Matthew Ellison Consulting), and Scott DeLoach (ClickStart). We had about 55 or so in the session.

The final keynote was an engaging one by Jared Spool (http://www.uie.com) — Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs. Jared’s son has been learning magic for a few years, and as the son is only 18 now, Jared has been accompanying him to magicians’ conferences for the past few years — conferences that he says are much like developers’ conferences! He’s obviously learned a few prestidigitation tricks along the way, which he shared with us using playing cards, spinning discs, drawing paper — and his slides. All of which was designed to get us thinking about how we and our designers use mental models, illusions, and delight to draw in our users. Some of his examples included:

• Disney’s Haunted Mansion: The user’s mental model (being scared, seeing the ghost etc.) is different from the imagineer’s model (sound, light, etc.). the role of the illusionist is to create two separate models and maintain them simultaneously.
• Deleting a file — even storing files on a hard drive — is an illusion. In reality there are no files at all — just 1’s and 0’s.
• Google works by fading the complex into the background and bringing the simple to the foreground. A single search could use some 300 to 700 machines in multiple locations before the results are displayed in about 0.2 seconds.
• The way we perceive things is important. We perceive time differently, and progress bars — even if they add more time to the process — give the illusion that something is happening and that progress is occurring. The perceived performance of how long it takes to display a website bears no correlation to the actual time taken. But task completion has a direct relationship with the perceived download time. For example, if you find what you want on Amazon, you believe that it has displayed quicker than a site where you can’t find what you want.
• Time passes slower when something is painful than when it is enjoyable. Perception correlates to pleasure and pain.
• Proximity is important. How far apart can you shift UI elements, for example, before the perceived linkage between them breaks?
• Designers must understand how users perceive the designs. Simple tricks can take advantage of users’ perceptions, making the design feel more responsive than it really is.
• There is a role for delight — the delight of whimsicality (illustrated beautifully by the fairy doors in Ann Arbor, MI, and the Twitter ‘server down’ message showing a cat with a screwdriver and referring to getting the hairballs out); delight by [grabbing our] attention; and delight by functionality. With functionality, the basics must be there [i.e. it must work] otherwise delight cannot happen; over time delight becomes expectation.
• People want magic in their lives.
• The techniques magicians use to create an illusion match what designers use to create great user experiences.
• The components of an illusion include: mental models, perception, and delight.

As usual, Joe and his team of tireless and incredibly friendly staff, put on a great conference. The venue was fantastic, the food was good, the company amazing, and the sessions full of possibilities, learning opportunities, and brain food. Thanks Joe and team for another great conference!

My other conference links:

• WritersUA 2009: Day 1 (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/writersua-2009-day-1/)
• Interview with Scott McCloud (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/interview-with-scott-mccloud/)
• Interview with Mary Jo Foley (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/interview-with-mary-jo-foley/)
• WritersUA 2009: Day 2 (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/writersua-2009-day-2/)
• User Assistance in Web Forms: Luke Wroblewski (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/user-assistance-in-web-forms/)
• WritersUA 2009: Day 3 (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/writersua-2009-day-3/)
• I just spotted a one-legged woman… (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/i-just-spotted-a-one-legged-woman/)

Related links:

• http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/writersua-2009-day-3/

[Links last checked April 2009]

I joined Twitter

I’m not sure why, and I sure don’t know how it all works yet, but everyone at the conference seems to be using it for all sorts of things, so I figured I should join and see what the fuss is all about. I can always delete the account if I find it’s just a bright shiny thing to distract me away from my normal day….

Thanks Char for helping me through some of the initial learning curve.

Oh, my Twitter username is @cybertext.

Update August 2009: Well, 5 months later and I’m still on Twitter! Fortunately I wasn’t exposed to too much “I’m brushing my teeth now” stuff otherwise I think I would have given it away. I’m really enjoying the conversations I’m having with other tech writers around the world whom I usually only see once a year (maybe) at a conference. And I get links to sites I wouldn’t normally come across. In fact, my experience pretty much parallels that of Mike Hughes here: http://user-assistance.blogspot.com/2009/08/social-web-this-old-dog-finally-gets-it.html. This old dog now gets it too! ;-)

[Link last checked August 2009]

WritersUA 2009: Registration Day: Sunday 29 March

Tweets for WritersUA are #writersua (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23writersua) No, I’m not into Twitter (yet!), but I was told that this is where the Twitterers (?) hang out!

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I spent part of this morning at the Pike Place Markets after having a late breakfast/brunch with Char at the 5th Avenue Cafe. Char went back to work on a document while I went to the markets. Coming back into the hotel, I saw Bonni who was about to catch a bus to go catch the ferry to Bainbridge Island — I had to drop stuff back in the room first, but said if she was still there when I got down (i.e. if the bus hadn’t already come), I’d join her. There’s a real problem being 40+ floors up — it takes a long time for the elevator to get to the floor and after dropping off the stuff etc. it took even longer to get down, especially with about 8 stops along the way, so by the time I raced back to the street and the bus stop, Bonni had gone :-( Sorry Bonni!

I went down to the registration desk around 2pm, got my conference goodies, and, as there was no-one hanging around except the lovely WUA staff, I said my hellos and then went back to the room to go through the stuff in the conference bag. There’s rarely any time at all during the conference to go through the bag, so the Sunday afternoon is always good! I also went through my presentation again as I’m on tomorrow afternoon.

There’s a meetup at the bar this evening (I think it’s around 7:00pm), then I have a dinner to go to.

All systems go for the start of the conference tomorrow morning. There are lots of exciting presentations on and already I’ve identified several time slots where I can’t decide which one to go to. This year we get an extra bonus — in addition to all the presentation slides being reproduced in black and white in the conference books, we also get a CD with the slides for all presentations in full colour. Thanks Joe — that’s a nice touch.

For those who don’t get Twitter

I confess — I have never used Twitter. And I haven’t seen any compelling reason — business or social — to do so. Many people with whom I have personal/professional/collegiate relationships live in North America or Europe and are asleep when I’m awake and vice versa.

My real-life and similar time zone friends and work colleagues either aren’t on Twitter, or aren’t online every moment of the day, or we communicate in other ways — phone/Skype, IM (instant messaging), or email… or even in person (imagine that!). So I really don’t get the point of Twitter.

This Next week, I leave Australia to speak at the WritersUA Conference in Seattle, and while I’m there my good friend and fellow speaker, Char, has four days to convince me of the value of Twitter! That’s her challenge! ;-)

Meantime, Sue G on one of my oh-so-ancient email discussion lists posted a link to a great little four minute cartoon/video that pretty much sums up how I think about Twitter right now:

http://current.com/items/89891774/supernews_twouble_with_twitters.htm

We’ll see if I still feel the same after the conference…

Oh, and to add another perspective, plenty of people have written positively about Twitter. Here are a few:

• http://www.nickanstead.com/blog/?p=1465
• http://www.whataboutmomblog.com/twitter-for-business/
• http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/12/01/does-twitter-fit-into-your-documentation-strategy/
• http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/12/05/twitter-part-ii-%E2%80%93-going-deeper/
• http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

And Rich Maggiani just published a one-page paper on the generational differences in responses to social media (http://www.solari.net/papers-socialmedia.php). I guess I fit squarely into the Baby Boomers…

Get an accurate word count

Do you charge by the word or the line? Transcribers, translators, and some writers do. Microsoft Word has a line numbering feature and a word count feature, but what about counting words and lines in other formats, like HTML, Excel or PowerPoint?

To the rescue is PractiCount and Invoice, a small software program that counts the words and lines in pretty much any format you throw at it. And it can create an invoice based on those counts too!

It also works with Vista and Office 2007 applications. And it might be a solution for those trying to stay within the 140 character limits of Twitter or 160 character limits of SMS!

You can download and try it free for 15 days:
http://www.practiline.com/download.htm

[Links last checked February 2009]

Twitter? Twaddle!

A friend in Connecticut sent me a link to this article on Twitter today. I have to say I agree! I can ‘get’ websites, blogs, instant messaging (IM), but I just don’t ‘get’ Twitter. Like, what’s the point?

I particularly liked these sentences:

“There’s no blaming Generation Y for that. Blame their parents, those touchy-feely post boomers who piled on the praise and positive reinforcement, lest they bruise little Dylan or Madison’s budding self esteem. It’s Mom and Dad who awarded gold stars and iMacs every time their precious progeny engaged in the most mundane of child development.”

I’m going to let Twitter pass me by… which just confirms that I must be getting old and grumpy! *grin*

Update: December 2007: Well, it’s not just me! Pamela Slim, over at Escape from Cubicle Nation doesn’t see the point either. I’m in good company. I’m also not convinced about the value of the Facebook’s “What are you doing now?” status thing. I only joined Facebook to play Scrabble with a friend, and haven’t got in to *why* I should use the stuff that’s there to broadcast my every moment. Both also assume I’m online every waking moment, and I’m not.

Update: I joined Twitter in 2009 with both a personal and a professional account. The impetus was a tech writing conference I attended in 2009 where one of the presenters talked about the benefits for connecting with others in the industry. And I’ve found it very useful for that.