Technical communicators and system developers collaborating in usability-oriented systems development
Pär Carlshamre · 1994
For the last 20 years, the human-computer interaction (I-ICI) research community has provided a multitude of methods and techniques intended to support the development of usable systems.The concept of usability has been thoroughly investigated in technical communication research as well.For example, Sullivan and Chapanis (1983) report how they "human factored" a text editor manual, using heuristics surprisingly similar to those offered by more recent HCI research (see, for example, Molich and Nielsen, 1990.Furthermore, technical communicators (TCs) typically have skills that are well suited for the design of usable computer systems.A survey of employment advertisements for TCS in Swedish newspapers made by Rolf (1987) indicates some of the requirements which applicants are expected to meet.The applicant should be extrovefi value creative and independent work on the fiontline of technology, have a bachelor's or master's degree, have computer experience, have documentation experience, be stylistically and visually @lent@ be able to communicate m a way that inspires confidence, be a good writer, be empathic, be able to understand how other people think and re@ be cooperative and service-minded.Surely, these are valuable characteristics of a good user interface designer too !In spite of the apparent similarities and the suggestions by several authors (e.g., Chishohn, 1988, Grice, 1988, Baker, 1988), there seems to be a mluctancy m the software industry to rnvolve TCS early in the development process (Gmdin and Poltrock, 1989).However, in the project reported here, called the Delta projec~the initiative was taken by a representative for the industry who perceived a need for the TCS in his company to be involved earlier in the development process.We formed the Delta project as a joint effort between industry and academia.The objectives of the project were to develop usability-oriented method extensions, and to involve TCS earlier in the process.The project consisted of three phasex In the Iirst phase, we developed a usabiMyoriented method extension, where one of the cornerstones was the close collaboration between technical communicators and system developers.During the second phase, the preliminary Delta extension was evaluated in a commercial project (in the following referred to as the pilot project), where the author participated as a system developer while collecting qualitative research data.During the third phase, the project was evaluated and the Delta extension revised.The final outcome of the project was a commercially available handbook.This paper describes the development and evaluation of the Delta method extension.Because of the author's background in systems development and limited experierm in the field of technical communication, the paper is written ftom an SD perspective.Considering that most of what is published about TCS joining the design teams in systems development seems to be written by technical communication representatives, this may' not be a disadvantage.