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WatAGE Bookshelf Generator Manual
I co-authored this manual with two other people as part of my work for a professional technical writing course at online-learning.com. The course emulated the workplace environment as closely as possible. We worked in groups. Each group divided up responsibilities, held meetings, produced a manual, conducted usability tests, and revised their manual based on the usability tests.
Work done: Wrote Chapters Four, Five and Seven. Participated in editing. Assembled the entire manual into the finished XML document. Participated in usability testing and a rewrite based on the testing. Participated in group meetings and decision-making.
Baker Payroll System Online Help
This was the final project for my course in Help Systems Design from online-learning.com. The scenario was that the (non-existant) Baker Company was replacing manual payroll calculations with the Baker Payroll System, a small Java application that automates basic payroll calculations and includes an updateable database of employee payroll information. The purpose of the help system was to ease the transition, and, on into the future, to reduce the need for paper documentation, help novice users to learn quickly, and help occasional users to accomplish tasks efficiently.
Work done:
- Information Plan: A written plan including company goals and objectives, user profiles, user tasks, and design implications.
- Help Model: A structural outline of the help system, including cross-references between topics.
- Help System: A compiled help system file (.chm format) prepared in Microsoft HTML Help, including full text and illustrations for each help topic, a table of contents, index and cross-references.
Usability Test Report for the WatAGE Bookshelf Generator Manual
This usability study report is part of the same class project that produced the WatAGE Bookshelf Generator Manual. Usability is the ease of use of a human-made object. Usability tests involve testing a product with human subjects. This report describes the methodology and results of our usability test, along with our conclusions and recommendations. After the test, we incorporated our recommended changes into the manual.
Work done: Usabililty testing, writing, editing, XML. I include this sample to show that I can write a technical report, and that I am familiar with the concepts and methods of usability testing.