Capstone Project Progress

So far I have been unable to secure an interview with a film critic working in the field today, but am still trying. I have sent out emails to many different organizations and film reviewers and am still awaiting a response. I am working my way through the second book which I selected to reference for my presentation, and have learned several very important things already. The first being that the -5 to 5 scale that I have been utilizing up to this point is really not that effective, and I believe that using a simpler yes/no approach to reviews would work much better. The other major thing which I have discovered is that while there are many different approaches to criticism, honesty is the most important quality which you can develop and display. People who read criticism often only read the review to find out whether they should see it or not, and frequently don't read past the rating as they aren't interested in any kind of deconstruction or analysis. In this way, film criticism must deal with the same hurdles and difficulty as newspapers:  people will only read into an article if their attention is grabbed quick and early.

Reading #10: Chapter 12

Chapter 12 deals with evaluating the usability of artifacts, or more appropriately, usability testing. I found it interesting that this chapter comes before chapter 13 which deals with developing a document or artifact that would then go on to be tested, but oh well. I also think that the book overuses the word heuristic to the extreme. I had never heard that word used until I picked up this book, and I wouldn't be surprised if actual technical communicators never use it either. This raised another important question, which relates back to the descriptive/prescriptive approach:  this book is full academic writing, and for the most part prescriptive in it's examples. So what happens in the real job sites, meeting rooms and other associated places with technical writers who are actually writing in the fields? You can study this book's recommendations to death, but if the people working in the real world speak a different language, how does that help? At the end of the day, any exposure to the inner workings of companies is beneficial I suppose. The chapter mentions that the effectiveness of a document depends on how well it connects with its audience, and I think that this is an important notion. Everything in tech writing depends entirely on the audience, as we have covered before. Three types of testing are mentioned:  cognitive walkthroughs, in which a specialist performs predetermined tasks using the document and gathers data on how well the tasks can be performed, expert reviews, in which experts review the document, and heuristic evaluations, in which rankings are assigned to how well the document meets various criteria. I found it interesting that if the document is incomplete in anyway, testing will be unable to discover all the issues that might arise with full testing. Two different types of testing were discussed, dealing with tests that are conducted in the early stages of document development, formative, and testing taking place at the end of development, summative.

Reading #9: Chapter 13

Chapter 13 is entitled Managing Projects, and deals with the step by step process of how projects can be taken from the conceptual stages, through to a fully realized physical product. I found it interesting that the chapter discussed the difference between the prescriptive vs. descriptive approach to the entire process:  is it better to do have an outline, or prescribed way of working that should followed, of a detailed descriptive walkthrough?  The chapter discusses the waterfall method as being the main asses that technical communicators have at their disposal for planning and management, but does mention several others including:  iterative, or user centered design, extreme programming, in which pairs work closely together and test, test and retest until problems are solved, and agile, in which small teams focus on small parts of large products and chew their way through one piece at a time. The steps involved in the waterfall method are as follows:  planning, in which 30% of the total time spent on the project is recommended to be spent, research/info gathering, in which info should be sought actively rather than passively by technical communicators, composition/invention, in which documents are drafted, reviewing/testing against quality criteria, revision, production, and dissemination. I thought the chapter did a good job of balancing the heuristic heavy approach that the book is infamous for by this point with alternatives and other important information pertinent to the discussion. The alternative methods to the waterfall method were interesting to read about, and I can see how each approach would be best suited to a different situation.

Reading #8: Chapter 16

Chapter 16 deals entirely and unrepentantly with the concept of visual design, and the different approaches and methods that are available to the enterprising technical communicator whereby they might be successful. From the text "A fundamental goal for information design is to enable and enhance relationships among stakeholders for an artifact...The field of information design focuses on devising novel ways to enable relationships among people through the effective design of content." Appearance is front and center in this chapter, as we are informed multiple times of the manner in which human beings read things, from the first glance and impression to the way we process information in a chunked/non-chunked presentation. There are three main concepts proposed in the chapter:  1) rhetorical grouping of information; 2) contrasting ideas; 3) signaling structural relationships.  One of the phrases that was used in the chapter that I found most helpful in understanding, and that in fact made me think of visual organization in a different way was, "strategic content grouping - making implicit structures explicit." This makes total sense. At last! A clear, concise description of all the rigmarole involved. What we all should aspire to when we design visual documents is to make the implicit explicit. The chapter talks us through the use of seriff vs. sans seriff fonts, double signaling, and the way the human mind works with the x height of different fonts, which was honestly quite interesting to read about. The remainder of the chapter gives a heuristic for leaning how to work this into your own life. I had almost managed to wipe the dreaded heuristic from my memory, but here it has crept back into my life. I think that these are bloated, counter-intuitive and unnecessary. Something that I found frustrating was a passage that said "for examples of this, see X and Y, where they of course named two scholars. Why not put the information into the body of the text? They didn't even refer to what the referenced material really had to do with the broader discussion! They simply said, see this to understand this. I took a few things away from the chapter, but overall I think that visual design is quite straight forward and the book didn't really do anything to build anything more than a basic understanding.

Response to Samantha's Articles

Extracurricular:  This was certainly an academic article while almost everything else we have read as part of these readings have been web articles or lists. That said, there really wasn't that much information to be found inside beyond the, again, obvious importance of extracurricular activities for those young people going into the job market fresh from college. The article shows through evidence that those students who are more plugged in, and participate more are usually more successful. This study was based out of a French speaking university in Switzerland, which may or may not affect how the students end up. I can't remember what the overall project this is being applied to, but it seems like good advice for anyone who is currently pursuing a baccalaureate degree.

Uncovering:  This article pulled no punches in its approach to instructing prospective law school attendees, and in fact painted a very realistic picture (as I understand it). It stressed the importance of aggressively going after a potential employer to both demonstrate how much you want the job as well as to ensure that your voice is heard among all the others crying out. The other point that I found interesting was that this article used real life examples of what some students had to do to finish law school. Of course, there is no way to know if this is true or not, but as with everything in life, we trust until we are lied to.

Response to Stephanie's Articles

Both of these articles come from the dreaded education-portal.com, a resource which I myself am guilty of referencing, and even though the majority of information contained within is obvious and what should be common sense, there are some good points and things to keep in mind in there. I thought that the old adage, location, location, location, was plugged adequately here, in reference to how valuable the location of any selected educational institution can be in reference to any publishing firm or company in the vicinity. This makes a lot of sense. While I'm sure there are many more publishing outlets, there is also going to be a huge amount of competition for those jobs. The other information I took away was the difference between book and magazine publishing, which as it turns out, isn't really that much of a difference. The complicated thing, and one that an individual would need to decide on their own, is what discipline of publishing they wanted to try to break into. These articles aren't going to give you any easy answers to difficult questions, merely acceptable places to begin a legitimate inquiry.

Responses to Steven's Articles

WikiHow:  This article presented a very concise and easily understandable list of things that you as a prospective freelance writer need to do. I found it very interesting that they talked at length about how the profession can become isolating, and that you may find yourself feeling lonely. I never really considered that before, but it seems like its a totally possible outcome of the career. The requirements for getting into the profession all seemed to be fairly common sense to me. Communication was one thing that I assumed you would need to be proficient at, but didn't really realize just how important it would be. I liked that the article presented the career in a very realistic way financially, instructing that a person should plan to supplement a main source of income for a while before making the jump to full time, and whenever doing so, to make sure that it is doable.

Rivendale:  This article gave a very brief overview of several do-it-yourself publishing alternatives to traditional firms. While finding out about Feedbooks, Smashword, and Wattpad seems like a useful thing for a prospective writer, I didn't think this article really contained much valuable information. He refers to the world of traditional publishing as a scary place, but doesn't give any anecdotes or information to back this up. I think it would be better if he had painted a picture of the two routes, and left it up to the reader to decide.

Writing Assistance:  Probably the main thing I took away from this article is that there are things like the STC Job Board. This is huge for anyone who might be considering becoming a freelance technical writer, and I'm sure that other disciplines have similar resources. Other than this, this article was interesting to take a somewhat different viewpoint of the process, from that of the employer rather than the job seeker. Pretty much all of the requirements were common sense, especially after the previous articles.

Response to Brianna's Articles

I thought all three articles did a good job of giving a brief overview of the editing field, but really didn't get too in depth about any one thing. Almost all the information presented is what I would consider to be common sense for someone interested in becoming an editor. I took two basic things away from these articles:  1) experience is highly valued when it comes to getting jobs and 2)  a college degree is essential. More specific detail or examples of the course in which other people have worked their way up into the industry would be helpful, as would directions to a more substantial information bearing resource available to students before graduating and being cast out into the horrid world of the post grad English profession seeking individual. I think that these articles provided a good jumping off point, but I'm sure there are much better articles out there.

Response to Melissa's Articles

Forbes:  I thought this article was very interesting. It discussed a lot of things that I never would have considered in relation to properly building a business plan. It made it very apparent from the beginning that this is definitely technical writing. You need to understand your audience and adapt whatever you generate to best appeal to them in the hopes of getting your business off the ground. The importance of discussing your competition was surprising as well, but in reality makes total sense. If you don't show that there is a market for whatever it is you want to do, why would someone give you money? Not answering every possible question and scenario makes total sense as well. It really seems like writing a business plan would require a lot of extra knowledge of business practices as well as similar businesses to the one which you want to start. I think the article did a good, quick and dirty job of presenting the most important steps in designing a plan.

Entrepreneur:  This was a much more intense article than the one from Forbes. Much of the same guidance and information was present here, but it was MUCH more fleshed out and detailed. I found a lot of great information here that I didn't see in Forbes. The importance of the legal writing dealing with the power structure of the business was interesting - I wouldn't have thought that you would need to address all of these issues which would be essential to whatever form the business eventually might take. There were also some math formulas to help the enterprising entrepreneur calculate things like employee numbers required and capital requirements. I think the article did a good job of breaking this down to a level that anyone could understand, or at least have a better chance of understanding. This was a bit overwhelming though, it threw tons and tons of information, all of which was presented as essential to the overall success of the plan. The one thing that I didn't really see in either article was guidance as far as writing style and what can be successful or not successful. Is it appropriate to be formal at all times? Can you be successful with a less formal approach? I imagine that this, like everything else, needs to be tailored to the business and the investor. 

Reading #7: Chapter 9

I think that for me, this was the most useful chapter so far from this book. There is still lots of what ifs and a series of questions that you can ask yourself or others in order to find the correct path. They even threw in the word heuristic a few times. But despite this, the chapter seemed to present genuinely useful information for navigating the ethical dilemmas that may and probably will crop up in the technical writer's workplace. Some information that has been beat to death by the other chapters was presented as well, with a few new insights. "Whenever you write you take a position a you establish a value vis a vis existing systems of power." This was thought provoking for me; I had never considered that any writing you do is situated within a greater power structure, and especially so for technical writing for a business. The chapter did a good job of showing just how complicated the business world can be. Based on the info at the beginning, I found myself thinking that surely some of these things the writers were asked to do must be unethical, but by the end was informed that there are always exceptions, in much the same way as the field of technical writing.

Reading #6: Introductory Material

After reading all of the introductory material that the book prefaces each section with, I think I have a better understanding of the manner in which the editors hoped this book would be useful. That said, I do not believe that their approach to organization and content really works. Lots of technical language is routinely used over the course of the text, but the one word that keeps resurfacing is "heuristic." Indeed, it seems like an anthem that was blared over loudspeakers, or some sort of rallying point that the editors got behind. The definitions of the word as I found them include, "enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves," and "a hands on or interactive approach to learning." This is significant in that there is no hands on teaching presented in the book. All of this is dialectic in nature:  "knowledgeable" figures in the fields present their information based around a central theme for each chapter, and we as students are, presumably, expected to take all of this information as correct or the right way to do these things. Not only do I not think this is heuristic as I understand it, but I think that it is totally out of character with the nature of technical writing and communication. They do a wonderful job of expressing the ever changing state of the field, but really don't offer anything good in the way of instruction. What I came to realize is that I can't come up with a better approach than they did. Even if you were able to provide a course that was entirely based around going into an internship situation and leaning how tech writers do their job in that situation, the very moment that you moved to a different environment, you would have to throw out the entire rule book that you had assembled. There a number of very important topics that are broached by the text, for example the use of social media, the importance of working with the members of the work force, but the only sort of information given is usually an example of someone in the work place (again, an infinite number of this kind of examples are severely limited in their ability to teach anything) and then a series of questions that you should ask to make sure that you cover all bases and fit in appropriately and acceptably.

Reading #5: Ch. 8

Chapter eight took a rather different approach to the topics of technical writing than most of the other chapters we have read so far, and introduced a few new ideas. The notion of wicked vs. tame problems was something that  I had never heard of before. As I understood it, a wicked problem is one that does not operate by a set of rules or within a stable/reliable environment whilst a tame problem, like chess or any other game, is reliable and predictable. This seems like a very important idea that will end up being central to any technical writing environment. Working with incomplete software or other designed products that are either still being tested or have not yet been tested is something that is discussed in the chapter and sounds like a common occurrence in the real world. "The information that technical communicators produce is as much formed by our technological contexts as it it forms our technological contexts." I found this to be the most interesting and important message of the chapter, and further emphasizes the idea that technical communicators need to be able to adapt and roll with changes quickly and effectively or they will be left behind. The section about the change in phone technology was fascinating as well, dealing with the change from "your calls" to "my calls." It really shows the massive shifts that technology has and will continue to undergo as we continue into the twenty first century.

Reading #4: Ch. 15

Chapter 15 focused on giving a more real world view of what the technical writing landscape actually looks like by introducing a young professional about to embark on her first project at her new technical writing job. What followed was a series of different questions and the various answers that the author's received from the professional writers that they asked. The idea that regardless of the specialization that you find yourself in, I found it interesting, and reassuring, that having a strong background in writing is essential, and most of the rest tends to follow. The chapter also addressed the ever changing nature of the profession very well, better than any of the other chapters we've read so far in my opinion, by providing many rapid fire examples of research and opinions. I'm starting to think that, based on the way that these authors are referring to "tech" writers, that none of them actually exist. Whether they are someone's imagined work force, or some other such strange thing, it is strange how these  people are written about. Questions, rules, and maxims are all layed out in painstakingly explicit detail. These people are so thoroughly characterized that it feels like the authors are more concerned with molding their ideal tech writer, than offering practical help to those going into the field. For example, all of the questions that are provided for all of the situations that one might find around them are all basically restating the same thing:  you need to be able to multitask, work well with others, learn quickly, and not be afraid of rapid change. It's like there's some giant elephant in the corner of the room that no one wants to or is willing to address. Is this due to the ever changing nature? Are these people afraid of making a statement that is invalidated by a technical shift minutes later?

Reading #3: Ch. 4

I found this chapter to be the most useful out of all those that we have read thus far, because it focused on several real life individuals and their experiences within the technical writing profession. It was nice to get the perspective of people who had worked their way through college, not knowing exactly what they would end up doing with their technical writing degree, and then hearing from them in regards to what they did during that time. I found it interesting that most of the articles that are referenced in this chapter come from 2003 or 2004, more than ten years old at this point. It seems to me that, while some aspects of the profession certainly must have stayed relatively the same, much of it has likely shifted completely, and I think that more up to date sources could help. The articles used here are used more in the vein of the theory or definition discussion, which has likely changed less than the more technology heavy areas of the discipline. I think the most important thing I found in the text was the section that mentioned, "learn all you can about tech comm, engage with others who do work similar to yours, lead if you are called upon to do so." I think that this emphasizes the importance of being well rounded, of having a deep pool of experience form which to draw from, and the ability to take control when needed. Most, if not all of the students mentioned in the chapter also varied their studies while still at university, which is something that I can see being very helpful later on in a technical writing career. They also discussed how they were trying to learn or stay on top of new technology whilst still working full time.

Reading #2: Henry

I felt that this chapter, while offering a rather interesting reflection on the similarities between anthropology and technical writing, didn't really do much at all. It seemed to me that someone had an initial idea of the fact that these two things were similar, and then proceeded to concoct a thirty-something page article to explain their "discovery." I've been having a problem with most of my other textbooks over the course of this, the first week of class, 2015, and I find the same issues within the pages of this book. These books seem vastly more concerned with academic masturbatory language, than with getting across a succinct point or enlightening the potential reader. What is the main point of this article? That to fully understand any workplace, especially one that is "contemporary" in the authors words, in an effort to produce any sort of effective technical writing about the establishment, one needs to fully understand the business, people, and most importantly the culture. I think that this is trite, banal and unnecessarily overblown. The entirety of this paper could, and should have been condensed down into a two page summary. An example of these fictional people is unnecessary, and in my opinion does nothing to clarify the very simple point of the paper. I think that anyone who is at the college level, and has taken a professional interest in writing for these types of settings already understands the importance of being informed prior to taking on any sort of project, already knows how to take notes and even reflect on them later, and is likely already aware of effective interview tactics either from their experience as interviewer or interviewee. I expected this article to deal with topics such as how a technical communicator might mesh with unorthodox technical environments, such as bakeries, delis, restaurants, or any other business that does in fact have need of a technically leaning writer, whether they know it or not.

Reading #1: Selfe & Selfe

One of the things that has bothered me greatly throughout all of the technical/professional leaning classes that I have participated in was the lack of a unifying definition of the discipline. This essay, while not overtly answering the question of an all encompassing definition, certainly address the issue, and is mainly focused on the different approaches that individuals and organizations have taken to try to provide an answer. All of the traditional methods of surveying the modern/current state of tech/pro writing, including historical accounts, research base, and general skills/understandings, made sense in the context which they were discussed, mainly within professional and academic settings, but I could also see their shortcomings. The method supplied by the authors is that of the text cloud, which through taking a sample of pages and the text contained therein, the surveyor then creates a "map" of all the most frequently used words which can then be further grouped or divided based on different attributes. The size of the more frequently used words is larger than those found less often. Selfe & Self claim that the text cloud provides a convenient and effective snapshot of any given field. The article, in typical academic article fashion, provided no convenient answers to the problem it suggested early on, and instead provided a survey and a possible alternative. I found it very interesting to read through the different approaches that have been attempted over the years, but found myself wondering if the problem is not quite a bit bigger than what is being discussed, and that maybe what this article concerns itself with isn't just a part of the larger beast. I'm also not sure that the text cloud would be that potentially effective beyond the initial wow factor and the fact that it looks cool and is easy to read.