Formalizing the Technical Communication and User Experience Relationship (STC Summit 2013)

© 2013 IBM Corporation
Technical Communication Summit ‘13
Formalizing the Technical
Communication and User
Experience Relationship
Lori Fisher
Director, IBM User Technology, Information Management Division
Fellow, STC, Silicon Valley Chapter
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2
Lori's organization at IBM
 Multidisciplinary organization of information developers, user interface designers/usability
experts, visual designers, and globalization professionals
 Mission is to design and develop all parts of the software product that users can see or
touch: interfaces and information
 Centralized group with responsibility for information deliverables across the division
– Hundreds of database, Big Data, and warehouse products for commercial customers
 200+ employees world-wide
– US: San Jose, San Francisco, Boston, Las Vegas, Austin,
Princeton
– Canada: Toronto
– Europe and Middle East: Germany, U.K., Israel
– Asia: China, India

3
Design and develop all parts of products and integrated solutions that
users can see or touch:
• User Interfaces – globalized, accessible
• Information: printed, online, web – globalized, accessible
• Installation and Up & Running experience
• Best Practices, Samples & Examples
• Collaboration on pre-sales enablement: blogs, white papers,
tutorials, demos, product overview & walkthrough videos
• Integration points across products, across the software portfolio
• ...in their language, culturally-sensitive
Mission

4
Another view of the mission:
Our Value Add through
Multi-Disciplinary Skills:
Make IT Clear!
Make IT Easy!
Make IT Appealing!
What We Deliver:
User Interfaces
User Scenarios
Design Validation
Integrated User Assistance, Online Help, Info Centers
Multimedia deliverables
Best Practices
ID:
UX:
Visual Design:

5
ID/UX
Director
UX Products
A and B
ID Product A ID Product B
The structure before…

What’s wrong with that picture?
6

What’s wrong with that picture?
 Success requires voluntary matrix behavior across departments
 ID and UX are probably working in parallel to design their deliverables
 ID probably starts with the assumption that certain kinds of information
are required because we’re
• Trained professionals with information expertise
• Recognized as specialists in information design
 UX probably making design choices that impact information without
factoring that in
 Collaboration: UX called upon to validate an information design, or
specific content
–Too late to question the product design that might enable an
entirely different information design
 Opportunity missed to completely redesign the approach to and need
for information
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8
Hovers
Task
launchers
Embedded
assistance
Wizards
Labels &
fields
Information architecture
Information design
Navigation
Content development
Editing
Standards
Information Development
Information Development (aka ”Tech Comm”) skills

9
Task Analysis
User
understanding
Scenarios
Competitive
assessments
User testing
Layout & “blueprints”
Visualization
UI graphics
Typography
Skins / themes
Color palette specs
Mockups
UI trends
UI guidelines
Wireframes
Prototypes
Interaction
design
User Research/
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Composite roles: User Research & Evaluation; Interaction Designer, Visual Designer.
( Also critical: UI Developer, Architect)
User Experience (“Design+”) skills

10
Recognize the Information Experience as a key component of the
User Experience…
 Our most recent reorganization combines ID and UX skills at the
department level for targeted portfolios.
 Dramatically improve the user experience by leveraging the
synergy of ID and UX multi-disciplinary skills. The best User
Experience comes from the integration of UX and ID skills, tightly
aligned with their respective extended Development areas.
 Get a laser focus on overall consumability and user strategy by
aligning all ID and UX teams under one management structure,
aligned exclusively with a specific business or product.
 Define the user experience first, then architect an information
experience to support that.
10
Walking the talk

11
ID/UX
Director
ID/UX
Product A
ID/UX
Product B
ID/UX
Product C
The structure after…

12
Task Analysis
User
understanding
Scenarios
Competitive
assessments
User testing
Layout & “blueprints”
Visualization
UI graphics
Typography
Skins / themes
Color palette specs
Hovers
Task
launchers
Embedded
assistance
Wizards
Labels &
fields
Mockups
UI trends
UI guidelines
Wireframes
Prototypes
Interaction
design
Information architecture
Information design
Navigation
Content development
Editing
Standards
Information Development User Research/
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Organization view of skills

13
 Simpler products require less documentation - simpler tasks, simpler
UI’s, simpler navigation, etc
 Automation of tasks eliminates the need for documentation
 Progressive disclosure, specifically embedded assistance, is the
strategic direction – requires tight integration of TC and UX teams
–“Walk up and use” will be a result of building information and
supporting affordances into the UI
 For many tasks, the information experience is still a key component of
the overall user experience – especially up & running, getting started
(including Task Launchers), and many others
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Leveraging TC and UX synergy: the concept

Information Management
TC and UX Synergy:
Getting Started

Start simple…
 Technical communicators (TC) often take the role of UX as user advocate when there is no
trained User Experience skill in the company
– Hire technical communicators with some formal training in HCI
• Many TC university programs now include usability and HCI training
– Bring in a consultant to introduce the idea of what UX skills can bring to the company
 On a Technical Communication team:
– Hire a full-time User Experience professional to focus on the information experience
(ideally with info design experience as well)
– Negotiate for one of the existing UX team to be dedicated to design of the info
experience
 If the company has one or more UX professionals:
– Formalize the collaboration of UX and TC around the Information Experience
• User testing should include scenarios that exercise the information
• Customer and user group interactions should include feedback on the information
– Formalize the structure itself – UX leads and manages the overall experience,
working closely with the Information Architect
 User Experience as the context for the Information Experience:
– UX drives the up-front information design
– Content is in support of an architected overall user experience
15

The continuum of change
16
From To
TC designs an information set based on
best–practices and prior content
UX designs a user experience that
includes a view of the information
experience; TC (Info architect) designs
content to support the overall user
experience
TC and UX collaborate to design
embedded assistance or interactive
content elements
TC included as part of the overall UX
task to design the information
experience. Content can only be
designed in context of the user
experience
User testing validates the effectiveness
(completeness, task- orientation, etc) of
the information
Information is tested only in the context
of a holistic user task
TC = Recognized specialists in
information design and architecture
TC = Recognized specialists in design of
the information experience
Assumption that certain kinds of
information are required
Redesign the approach to and need for
information by designing the user
experience first
Goal: a great information set Goal: a great user experience

Information Management
TC and UX Synergy:
A Case Study

Big Data Case Study – interactive conceptual models
 Goal: How do we jump start users so that they can use our products with less assistance?
 A mental model of the solution to enable users to understand its value and how to use it
– New paradigm for speeding time-to-value
– Convergence of design and information; lead with design, rather than text
• Make it interactive and augment with 100 words not 1,000, for savings of an order-of-
magnitude. (Also less translation, less content to review!)
 Approach
– Collaborative, multi-disciplinary team effort across UX and TC with a visual, interactive
focus
– Continue to create and refine conceptual models, with user validation
– Use them as launch points into key user roles, scenarios, tasks, etc.
– Include them in appropriate media: product UI, Information Center, videos, other collateral
– Use them to drive change, because they can illustrate the delta from what the user expects
and can highlight usability issues that may exist
– Define best practices to generalize conceptual models and interaction patterns
 What is it?
– First layer of a progressive disclosure model. Each section of the interactive model contains
flyover text, and can also include screen captures. The combination of interactive features,
flyover text, screen captures, and related links to the information center creates an
informative, useful solution that goes beyond still graphics and plain text.
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Interactive conceptual models – early iterative designs
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Build a mental model for the user of the tooling and how it works together, by role

BigInsights - Overview
20 IBM Confidential
Grouped by Roles
Default state:
Task/nodes are full color
with connectors to indicate
flow
Background graphics are
subdued colors with
simple outline rendering

BigInsights - Overview – Hover state example
21 IBM Confidential
Hover over Install:
Background Services and
Cluster graphic display in
Full color
Click on Install:
Screen updates and
navigates to respective
topic in the InfoCenter

BigSheets – v2.0 Fly out with screen capture
22 IBM Confidential
Hover over step 2
displays the
respective screen
capture

BigInsights – SDA Fly out with link
23 IBM Confidential
Hover state for link in fly
out.
User clicks on link and
fly out updates

BigInsights – SDA Fly out – link update
24 IBM Confidential
fly out update
Back link

Try It Live!
BigInsights v2r0 IC is live!
– http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/bigins/v2r0/index.jsp
Interactive conceptual models
– http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/bigins/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.swg.im.infosphere.biginsight
s.product.doc/doc/c0057605.html
s.product.doc/doc/acc_mda.html
– http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/bigins/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.swg.im.infosphere.bigdata.sd
a.doc/doc/acc_sda.html
s.analyze.doc/doc/c0057518.html
Getting Started with IBM BigInsights
– http://youtu.be/59NmBXNIcoc
25IBM Confidential

Results
–Dramatically improved clarity of tasks and task sequences to drive
interaction design points
–Dramatically improved understanding of tasks to drive improved and
more effective information
–Key Technical Sales leader: “best documentation inside or outside of
IBM”
– Usability testing with 35 customers at key customer conference:
• 100% rated it “better” or “much better” than the doc provided today
by other vendors
• 98% stated it was “likely” or “very likely” to help them achieve a task
• Quotes: "The interactive documentation is very useful" and “If we
have this chart, even my 9 year old son can do it.”
–Business analysts achieved time-to-insight in x minutes
–Data scientists analyzed social data in y minutes
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 Up & Running:
– A TC/UX team executed on key findings from user research to provide the types of
information users need when they need it. UX led effort (including design and code)
to include architecture / deployment topology as part of the installer itself. Team
jointly created a Quick Start Guide and installer planner. These collaborative, multi-
pronged efforts ensured users could successfully get up and running, quickly.
 Task Launchers:
– An innovative task aid called the Task Launcher was created by a team of 1 Senior
UX and1 Senior TC lead, to address up and running across platforms by helping
users find key tasks organized by application lifecycle phases.
– The Task Launcher has been delivered in eight products.
 Embedded Assistance
– TC/UX made significant strides in architecting Embedded Assistance into the
product interfaces (instead of documenting help or Info Center topics) in the past 2-
3 years. The joint team has also created a DITA XML customization for coding
Embedded Assistance. TC and UX have collaborated to create embedded
assistance in 51 products across one division in a single year, doubling from the
prior year.
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Leveraging TC and UX synergy - examples

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 An TC/UX product team jointly developed initial designs for a basic "Component
Launcher" for the product to address user feedback that finding the right
component out of the box was confusing.
 One product TC/UX team developed and improved embedded assistance (UI
text, messages, tooltips, icons) and validated previews of that work at an
important user conference.
 Another set of TC/UX teams jointly planned and conducted a usability sandbox
session, as well as individual and group feedback sessions, at a key user
conference. The results of these activities include: user data that will inform
vNext plans for product design and information quality improvements; over 300
surveys returned to provide insight and priorities on improvements and best
practices content; 240+ customer contacts for future followup on both information
and product design issues.
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Leveraging TC and UX synergy – other examples

Formalizing the Technical Communication and User Experience Relationship (STC Summit 2013)

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