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Human Factors for Technical Communicators
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Author: Marlana Coe
List Price: $49.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0471035300
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (06 April, 1996)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 36,699
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
we need more people reading stuff like this
I cannot tell you how many times, as a techwriter, and content developer, if you work on other people's stuff, edit the engineer's stuff...they think you are "Dumbing-it-down" or castrating it. They make like they are working on the Next NOBEL PRIZE, and you dare touch their stuff!! How-dare-you! How could a lowly writer understand the full glory of their verbiage?
And the more obscure, passive and inpenetrable it is, the more it makes them look "more better smarter-est", the ole highschool "Baffle them with BS" ploy. If it's in pure ASCII text, even better! See, they are catering to the purest of Intelligencia... So basically, the writer gets treated like a transcriptionist, or formatter, and god help you if you try to do your job.
And then the schmucks have the nerve to keep asking you back to help them, but keep undermining you. Then they wonder why nobody likes to use their application. Hmmmmm! I wonder!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Fantastic book!
This book is extremely well done, and it can be applied to much more than writing. I think that the bulk of it applies to almost any kind of design, i.e getting to know the users, their needs, abilities, experience, etc. and then involving them in the design, getting feedback, establishing a partnership, etc. It's just the kind of up from the trenches stuff that managers would be wise to listen to but very rarely do. You can definitely sense the frustration the author has in technical writers being the band-aid applied to poor product design and cost-cutting, and she offers concrete alternatives when you have limitations.I also love the recursiveness of it, in that she is writing the same thing she is also describing, so talk about reading between the lines! I could read it over and over, each time appreciating more and more how she followed her own advice. This book is what I always look for in a book, because it starts from the beginning and ends at the end, with a clear trail of how it got there. The supporting introduction, glossary, index, notes and references are very well done.
Rating: 1 out of 5
This book is not a "how-to"
Well, I just got this book. From the Preface: "This book is not a "how-to". This book is one level higher and deals with the cognitive psychological theory of designing and developing technical communication...". Thats not what I need. I looked for "how to' not for another academic book. Well this book is going to the return center.
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