About the Usability SIG
Member Profiles: July 2000

Edited by Craig Marion, Membership Coordinator

• Sharlyn Avina Dimick
• Linda G. Gallagher
• Greg Holmes
• Sarah Lathrop
• Aaron Marcus
• Eric Olive
• Eric Peterson
• Denise D. Pieratti
• Randy Williams

Sharlyn Avina Dimick
Motorola
Urbana, IL
dimick@urbana.css.mot.com

I've been a member of STC since 1991 and graduated from Bowling Green State University with a Master's in technical communication in 1993. As part of my undergraduate coursework I did my senior thesis on usability testing.

As a technical communicator I prided myself on being a user advocate and tried to focus on the usability of the user guide (even though I had no provision for formal usability testing). In the fall of 1998, I left the technical communication field and went into software engineering as a system test software engineer for Motorola at the Urbana Design Center in Urbana, IL. I find myself in a similar role as a software user interface tester. I'm again a user advocate, but I'm now able to influence the usability of the product a little better. This has been a wonderful career change for me.

I'm still involved in technical communication as a freelance web developer. My one-woman business is called Piper's Pages. I'm also a freelance reporter for the Rantoul Press, a weekly newspaper in the town I live.

My husband Steve and I have three English cocker spaniels, Piper, Lad, and Dixie. I also have a stepson Mike who spends the summers with us.

Linda G. Gallagher
TechCom Plus
Westminster, Colorado
lindag@techcomplus.com
http://www.techcomplus.com

I am an independent technical communicator specializing in hardware and software user guides and online help. I made a career change 6+ years ago after working extensively with computer systems and computer users in the "Bell System" for nearly 12 years. As soon as I started my business, I realized that computer user interfaces (UIs) needed lots of improvement. I immediately began giving clients feedback about their UIs. (I actually list the feedback as a deliverable in my proposals now.) Only later did I learn that what I was doing was part of usability.

Through STC, which I've been active in since learning about the organization more than six years ago, I learned about usability as a field. Since then I've read several books (I just loved the Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, especially his discussion of doors) and attended a variety of conference sessions and workshops about usability and UI design. I'm not sure that I'll make the leap to specialize in usability, but what I've learned has helped me to help my clients improve their UIs.

In my spare time (what's that?), I like to ride my horse in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, ski, hike, cycle, travel, and read. I wish I had more time to pursue these interests and many others. Somehow work just seems to get in the way.

Greg Holmes
Jackson National Life Insurance
Lansing, MI
GregHolmes@aol.com

I write Help and intranet web pages. Our employees have a WIDE range of computer ability, not to mention subject matter knowledge. So usability is a big issue. It is important that we make our information very easy to use, and in some cases use rapidly (looking up information while on the phone with a broker or customer).

Outside of work I enjoy most spending time with my wife, Charlotte (going for drives, walks, etc.).

I look forward to sharing knowledge so nobody has to reinvent the wheel (at least no more often than necessary)!

Sarah Lathrop
Forum Financial Group
Portland, ME
sarah-lathrop@forum-financial.com

I got into the software business eleven years ago when I accepted a job in a two-person software company. Over the next six years I was able do many different things, including tech support, training, trade show presentations, QA testing, and technical writing. I acquired many of my skills on the job.

For the last four years I have been working as a full-time technical writer. I took a course from JoAnn Hackos and began to implement her teachings in my work. I recently read her book User and Task Analysis for Interface Design and knew I wanted to be involved in the design of the software and not just the documentation. As I researched the subject further, I found many interesting books, web sites, and articles about performance-centered design, EPSS, embedded help, and other related topics. I began to think of user documentation in a different light; the lines between user interface and help began to blur in my mind. I could see how much more could be done to support users within the software itself.

The company I currently work for is supporting my interest in user interface design. I will be attending a week-long training class and will be involved in the interface work for our new web-based application, which will manage the accounting for mutual funds. Since errors can result in costly fines to our company, it is imperative that we provide the best possible support for our users so that they do not make mistakes in their work.

I see involvement with interface design and usability as a natural career path for technical writers. I'm looking forward to learning new things and taking on new challenges.

Aaron Marcus
Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc.
Emeryville, CA, and New York, NY
Aaron@AMandA.com
http://www.AMandA.com

For 30 years, I've been interested in information design and information visualization. Perhaps this focus is a natural outgrowth of my professional education in corporate-oriented graphic design and before that in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. I started out early as a researcher in computer graphics, becoming, as far as I know, the first professional graphic designer to program computers. When I worked at Bell Telephone Labs developing a desktop publishing system for the Picturephone in 1979-81, I could only dream about where technology would take us. Now we've arrived.

One of the major challenges for us as organizers and presenters of information is to help people make smarter decisions faster about their own lives and the lives of others, and then take effective action. By designing the right metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction,and appearance, we can help people manage knowledge effectively. By knowledge, I mean siginificant patterns of information together with action plans for what to do.

One of the special challenges is enabling people to access large numbers of functions and large amounts of data using devices with small displays, which I refer to as "baby faces." These devices may replace desktop computers soon as our primary means of communicating with others and with sources of information. By concentrating attention on the unique characteristics posed by these devices -- e.g., small size, limited spatial resolution, limited color, ubiquitous use, users of varying backgrounds, varying use contexts, varieties of information, and special needs for charts, maps, and diagrams of structures and processes -- we may be able to come up with new paradigms that will depart radically from our current expectations.

The exciting journey into the tribal world of information rituals, devices, agents, and spaces continues.

Eric Olive
Compuware Corporation
Madison, Wisconsin
eolive_99@yahoo.com

Like many in the profession, I came to technical writing after kicking around in grad school for awhile. My first tech writing job was with a technical documentation firm. This experience proved valuable because, as in many small shops, the writers did everything from standard research, writing, and editing to high end desktop publishing.

This broad experience has proved valuable in my current position as a tech writing contractor. My employer places technical specialists on client sites. Through contracting I'm exposed to a variety of assignments and client settings. I find this variety fun and challenging. One of my biggest challenges has been learning more about usability. Interviews with end-users, some reading, and trial-by-fire have gotten me by.

I want to do more than just get by. I'm hoping to gain serious, substantive, applicable knowledge from this SIG

Time outside work is spent reading, biking, and studying Web development and Spanish.

Eric Peterson
Merrill Corporation
Jackson Heights, New York
erique@ix.netcom.com

Although my degrees are in music, by the time I got a master's degree in French horn performance, I knew I didn't want to be a professional hornist! My career arc has gone through typist, help desk, trainer, and course developer before I became an official technical writer. I have been the sole technical writer for a document imaging product for four years now. As our company has changed management and direction drastically in the last few months, I am now working a lot more on the development end, writing software specifications as well as administrator and end-user documentation. I find this new path exciting.

We have never had a formal usability testing process, but I have always made suggestions for improvement: some obvious, like the wording of a prompt, and some more subtle. With our recent management changes, I have more opportunity to design consistency and usability into our product before the developers get their hands on it, and the company as a whole is paying much more attention to the client's needs. For instance, our product has never had a reputation for ease-of-use, but the latest version offers various levels of complexity. The new user is presented with a very basic search screen and will only be presented with more complex functionality if he/she goes looking for it. This is a major step in the right direction.

Outside of work, I'm still a musician. I am the artistic director and conductor of a community wind ensemble that gives three concerts a year, am active in the local Gilbert and Sullivan society, and enjoy living in New York City and going to Broadway shows with my partner of five years.

Denise D. Pieratti
Xerox Corporation
Rochester, NY
Denise.Pieratti@usa.xerox.com

I began my career as a technical communicator in 1984 after several years of struggling with the computer documentation of the early 1980s. (Did you ever try to interface an Apple dot matrix printer with a Commodore 64? Don't try it with the documentation!) Wanting to leave a career as an engineering geologist, I sought a new career that would satisfy my newly discovered interest in computers, my continued love of communicating and the printed word, and my creative spirit.

A forward-thinking person at Xerox named Peter Balgochian hired me to write software documentation for publishing software applications. Sixteen years later, I am still at Xerox. I have worked in all aspects of product development, user training and documentation, and sales and marketing support. I created a usability group for Xerox Corporation's corporate Information Management organization that focused on developing usable software by matching work tasks with the overall system design, providing effective user interfaces, and by supporting the application with documentation and training.

I'm currently a Strategy Manager, where I help my organization define a vision for its future, the actions necessary to realize that vision, and the challenges we must overcome for the solutions business to succeed.

Outside of work, I'm President of Women's Council of the Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce and a board member of Women's Foundation of the Genesee Valley. My other interests include figure skating, quilt making, golf, Bob, Felix, and Mandu.

Randy Williams
Southwest Airlines
Dallas, TX
Randy.Williams@wnco.com

As far as careers go, I have been all over the map. 8 1/2 years as an Air Traffic Controller in the US Army, and 12 1/2 years as a Crew Scheduler and Crew Scheduling Manager here at Southwest Airlines. I stumbled into Technical Writing by being the guy responsible for writing the manuals and training our flight crews on our crew management systems. When the company created a IT documentation department, I was moved over here.

In the last 2 years I have discovered, as most any technical writer has, that our interfaces were not very intuitive and the design cycle wasn't conducive to creating anything better. In typical Southwest fashion, when I voiced my concerns they said "go find out what we can do about it".

Most of my training has been self taught from what I've learned surfing the internet as well as an excellent course taught by Dr. Susan Weinschenk in Edgar, Wisconsin. I'm currently working on a project that has allowed extensive design considerations and repetitive usability testing in each phase of the project. So far, everything is going great.

When I'm not working you can usually find me running the roads while training for a marathon.