Tutorials
SIGDOC 2001 features 6 tutorials, 3 full-day and 3 half-day.
Full-Day Tutorials
Half-Day Tutorials
T1:
Creating Effective and Enjoyable Documentation: Enhancing the
Experience of Users by Aligning Information with Strategic Direction and
Customer Insights
Karl Smart
Brigham Young University, USA
Dave Norton
Yamamoto Moss, USA
Contact:
Karl Smart
karl_smart@byu.edu
Organizations produce value for customers and gain competitive advantage by
creating meaningful experiences for consumers and users of products and
services. Documentation and information play a central role in the experience of
users, particularly with software applications and the Web. This tutorial gives
participants an understanding of how "experience design" is impacting
documentation and online interactions.
THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 5:30p.
T2:
Cross-Cultural User-Interface Design for Work, Home, Play,
and On the Way
Aaron Marcus
Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc., USA
Contact:
Aaron Marcus
Aaron@AMandA.com
This tutorial introduces issues of globalization, internationalization,
localization, and culture, in particular, Geert Hofstede's classic cultural
anthropological study, Cultures and Organizations, in which he identifies five
fundamental dimensions of all cultures:
- Power distance
- Individualism vs. collectivism
- Femininity vs. masculinity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Short vs. long-term time orientation
These dimensions are evidenced at work, at home, in schools, and in families
through symbols, heroes, rituals, and values. The presenters define and explain
these dimensions, and discuss their impact on the design of user interfaces and
information visualization in Web-based communication, mobile devices, and
information appliances. Then, they lead the audience on a tour of Web sites as
participants examine cultural bias on the Web.
THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 5:30p.
T3:
XML for the Rest of Us
Jonathan Price
The Communication Circle, USA
Contact:
Jonathan Price
jprice@swcp.com
As the Web drives everyone to move from creating documents to managing the
flow of content in the form of thousands of interactive objects, the eXtensible
Markup Language (XML) provides a standard way to describe that content, grab
information from databases, enable business-to-business commerce, and
personalize the information provided customers at online stores. This full-day
workshop gives non-programmers an overview of the benefits and drawbacks of XML,
describes the role of the Document Type Definition as a model of content, then
shows you how to mark up documents with the tags from that model.
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 5:30p.
T4:
Help to Page or Page to Help: A Comparative Case Study
Darren Barefoot
Cape Clear Software, Ireland
Contact:
Darren Barefoot
darren.barefoot@capeclear.com
Single sourcing and content reuse is a hot issue amongst technical writers.
This tutorial examines two solutions to producing online help and print-ready
documents from the same source material. Harrowing tales will be offered of two
opposing single-sourcing strategies: Starting with a 1000-topic online help
system, I have used RoboHelp Office to convert to Microsoft Word. Conversely, I
have used Quadralay WebWorks to convert a 400-page manual developed in Adobe
FrameMaker into a HTML-based help system. The process and pros and cons of each
strategy will be described and evaluated. Attendees are guaranteed cautionary
tales, best practices and, if they're lucky, some MS Word macros to take home
with them.
THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 12:00p.
T5:
The Documentation Process: Create It, Refine It, and Get Them to Use It
Bill Thomas
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Contact:
Bill Thomas
wrt@sei.cmu.edu
With a well-defined and managed process for developing documents, your
technical communication department can consistently produce high-quality
publications. You can create accurate budgets and schedules, and respond to
changes while keeping projects on track. In short, you can set your clients’
expectations, and then meet or exceed those expectations. Without a process, you might still deliver a high-quality publication. You
might even get it out on time and on budget—but only through your own personal
heroics and the heroics of your staff members. And you will have great
difficulty sustaining that performance from project to project. To consistently provide excellent service and add value to an organization,
TC departments must develop and refine documentation processes that work for
their organizations, and then find ways to institutionalize those processes so
that they become part of the culture, without requiring enforcement and mandates
from upper management. This half-day tutorial will explore the subject of
developing and institutionalizing a documentation process.
THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001: 8:30a -- 12:00p.
T6:
The DITA Architecture
Michael Priestley
IBM Toronto, Canada
Contact:
Michael Priestley
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an XML architecture for
producing and reusing technical information. The base package for the
architecture is produced at IBM, but freely available through developerWorks.
This tutorial will cover the principles involved in chunking content into topics
and contexts, creating a type hierarchy using DTD modules, and creating a
process cascade using XSLT transforms.
THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED
Details
Sunday, October 21, 2001; 2:00p -- 5:30p. | 
