The Project Cycle
ORR Home > Writing Handouts > Technical Writing > Project Cycle
19 Jul 2000; by Dennis
G. Jerz
Prototypes
in Technical Writing: What Are They?
A good prototype will help you identify flaws
(research gaps or mistaken assumptions) long before
you have dug yourself into a hole by investing a
lot of time in it. A sculptor makes a scale model in clay
-- a prototype -- before chiseling away at a full-sized chunk
of marble. It it much easier to fix major mistakes in clay
than it is to throw away a ruined chunk of marble and start
over again.
19 Jul 2000; by Dennis
G. Jerz
Usability
Testing: What Is It?
The first rule of technical writing is "know your
audience." But even the best planning cannot
predict all possible user errors. This
document introduces the concept of testing for usability,
which measures whether test subjects can actually use your
prototype to complete assigned tasks.
See Also:
Related Links
Jakob Nielsen
The
Usability Lifecycle
Anything that is based on a linear progression from one set
of specs to the next will fail, because most people cannot
read specs. Also doomed to fail is the popular but extremely
wasteful Internet strategy of throwing something up onto a
website and hoping that it "sticks." What does work
is iterative design.
Compiled by Dennis
G. Jerz
19 Jul 2000 -- First posted
23 Aug 2002
-- Last modified
ORR Home > Writing Handouts > Technical Writing > Project Cycle
