Dateline Houston is the newsletter of the Houston Chapter of the Society
for Technical Communication, a nonprofit organization. Ten issues are published
each year (September through June).
Ideas for Avoiding Confusion in an International Virtual Office
by Jeff Staples, Independent Contractor
Last month, part one of this article discussed several cultural factors that may cause confusion or problems in an international virtual office. This article discusses ways to avoid confusion in an international virtual office.
In communicating, especially between cultures, members in an international virtual office need to possess a willingness to learn about/experience other cultures and other practices. For example, some cultures may respond to messages (e-mail or phone) promptly while others may take hours or days to respond. This could result in frustration as the cultures correspond with each other. Thus, having tolerance for others and practices that may be different from your own is essential for anyone dealing with intercultural communication, such as in an international virtual office.
In addition, a company cannot dictate another country's laws or practices and online communication is still generally free of laws governing its use (and misuse). Therefore, to address these issues, the company and/or virtual office should establish its own guidelines for online communication. The company can have its legal department write the guidelines for legal interpretation and have each team member sign a disclosure based on the guidelines.
To help avoid confusion/problems in an international virtual office, management should consider the following ideas:
Establish guidelines for the virtual office and its members on copyright and privacy issues. For example, create guidelines on the use and distribution of information exchanged among members.
Develop a disclosure agreement for the virtual office that each member will sign. The agreement can help prevent (or protect against) members disclosing any information gathered through office activities to other individuals or companies not affiliated with the office/team.
Develop a mission statement for the activities/projects handled by the virtual office and its members to gain the members support for the goals of the team. (Getting people on-board with the mission of the team and getting people to believe in what the team is doing may hinder any efforts by members to “hurt” the team by sharing information to others or using the information in the wrong manner.)
If English is designated as the “office language,” members need to identify the dialect of English that they use. In addition, they need to “either familiarize themselves with potentially troublesome expressions or have a native speaker of that dialect of English review the [communication] to help ensure that the correct message is conveyed” (St. Amant 2000, 83).
With e-mail and phone being the team member's primary means of communication, members should take care in preparing and conveying their written and oral communication. For example, e-mail text can be cold and, if the communication is not written carefully, the person receiving the communication can easily interpret the text the wrong way.
Identify the numeric representations that will be used, or that may be implied. For example, when representing a date, always spell out the month. And for time references, come to an agreement about using AM and PM or a 24-hour clock (which helps avoid the confusion that can occur when using AM and PM).
Any communication interaction can result in confusion if there are any differences with the individuals involved. In addition to such basic differences as personality and characteristics, cultural differences can also lead to confusion when communicating.
Edward Hall and Geert Hofstede constructed dimensional models that provide a good basis for gathering general information about cultures/countries. For example, Hall identifies the dimension of high- and low-context cultures. As these cultures communicate with each other online, they will need to be open to each other's various modes of communication.
As with any communication, the more you know about the other person helps you to deliver and receive information in the most effective manner.
References
St. Amant, Kirk. “Success in the International Virtual Office.” Idea Group Publishing. 2000.
The Death of the Technical Author?
Ellis Pratt, Sales and Marketing, Cherryleaf House
Technical authors do not have high prominence in the workplace, and they don't have the best of images (as can be seen in the movie, “The Technical Writer”). Today, many technical authors are struggling to find new employment in the current IT sector, and one can find messages on Internet newsgroups that question the future employment prospects for technical authors in North America and Europe . Some wonder whether the role of the technical author will disappear, as other careers have in the past. In this article, we look at the problems faced by technical authors in defining their role, and we make some recommendations for the future.
The Problems
Technical authors face the following issues:
Overlapping technologies mean overlapping job roles.
Technologies and software are developing in a way that means that the boundaries between the programmer, the technical author, the Web developer, and the trainer are becoming blurred. For example, the online Help that will ship with the next release of Windows (code name Longhorn) may look more like a Web site or a computer-based tutorial (CBT) system than the type of Help files we currently see. This means that some technical authors feel that they are being “crowded out” and losing their jobs as their work is taken on by others within the organization.
The work can be done in other ways.
From time to time, new software or technology will lead some technology evangelists to claim that you can do away with the need for “man-made” user assistance. Common themes appear and reappear with each technology wave, with people claiming that:
They can make software that is so intuitive to use that users will never need online Help.
Programmers can write the documentation to the standard needed.
Special software can be used to create user assistance by looking at the lines of code.
Information can be dumped into an information store, and special search software can be used to retrieve the information that people need.
Computer-based tutorials can provide all the assistance that people need.
It's a specialist job and a lonely one.
Many are in an environment where he or she is the only technical author in the organization, and this can mean that their career path is unclear.
Their contribution to the business can be uncertain.
Some people perceive what technical authors produce to be a necessary evil—something that needs to be provided but is not of any great value. So they look to keep costs, and consequently the quality, to a minimum.
So What Do Technical Authors Do That Is of Value to the Organization?
We believe that technical authors, as well as specialist documentation companies, are valuable to organizations in the following ways:
They explain technical information to a nontechnical audience in an unambiguous way.
Enabling people to understand is a fundamental part of producing user assistance and is the authoring part of technical authoring. And as life is getting more complex, it seems unlikely that software will ever be developed that is so intuitive to use that users will never need any assistance.
They organize information so that people can find the information that they need.
We call this skill information design or information development . We believe that these skills in information design have a wider application to the business than just the development of user manuals, procedures documents, and Help files. These skills—organizing information and providing the means by which people get that information—can help organizations fight and win the battle of information overload.
Our Recommendations
We offer the following suggestions:
Technical authors' skills should be applied more widely across an organization.
In other words, create an Information Design department.
We suggest that the role of the technical author should be redefined as information designer and that the Technical Publications department should be redefined as the Information Design department. Doing this should help make it clearer to everyone that technical authoring skills—making large amounts of unstructured information more useful— can be applied elsewhere in the organization.
IT departments, quality assurance managers, marketing executives, and Webmasters don't have information design skills. The technical author (or information designer) does have these skills and can offer these skills to anyone in the organization that has to deal with large amounts of unstructured information.
Carry out usability testing to measure the value of what technical authors produce.
You should use some form of measurement if you want to place a value on something. Jakob Nielsen ( www.useit.com ) has described how to carry out meaningful usability studies with a small amount of effort. So test to see what happens if users don't have any documentation and how they react to different types of user assistance.
Get involved in the development of new software at an earlier stage.
As online user assistance becomes more tightly integrated with the software, the technical author should be more tightly integrated with the development of the software, right from the beginning of the process.
Acquire the additional skills needed.
The technical authoring role today requires more than just writing. It requires skills in online information design and usability. In the future, it could require skills in writing JavaScript and developing e-learning content. You can probably avoid the need to manipulate code if you use the most popular Help authoring tools. Nevertheless, ongoing developments probably mean that technical authors will require more training.
Use the right tools for the job.
The latest software from the main software vendors in the technical authoring field provide more than just an authoring environment. Many tools now include content management, e-learning, scripting, and support for output across a range of media. The vendors seem to have a good appreciation of the key issues surrounding the provision of user assistance and large documents.
Conclusion
The overlapping of technologies and the uncertainty of the contribution of the technical author means that the boundaries between this and other positions in organizations are becoming blurred. Technical authors have skills that organizations still need. Indeed, their skills can be applied to new areas, which means that it's time to take a new perspective on the role. So maybe we need to say "The technical author is dead. Long live the information designer."
E-mail: ellis@cherryleaf.com
Learning XML
by Renee Schurtz, STC Puget Sound Chapter
Lately you may have noticed the increase in newsletter articles, seminars, and STC meeting topics that relate to XML. If you haven't been keeping up, you might be wondering, “What's all the fuss about XML?” Or, “Why do I need to learn this if my job doesn't have anything to do with XML?” If you haven't kept up, you might be interested to know why you should.
What Is XML?
Early in its life cycle, Extensible Markup Language (XML) was seen by some as an excellent technology for technical writers. “At this point, all signs indicate that XML offers the potential of being an ideal tool for tech writers to learn and use. In fact, tech writers are ideal candidates for using this technology because we already have the information development, design, and presentation skills necessary to develop these structured document formats,” Deborah S. Ray recently stated on the TECHWR-L Web site.
XML is a markup language that was designed to be an alternative to HTML as the language used to manage content on the World Wide Web. Unlike HTML, it enables the writer to create customizable tags, or labels, if you will, that make sense for use with the writer's content. This feature allows the writer to create a document or system that is content based or designed around the content, rather than a document or system that is designed around the limitations of HTML's inflexible tags. Currently, technical writers use XML predominantly as a way to create content in one file format that can be reused for different purposes and transferred to many formats such as printed manuals or Web pages. XML's flexibility has driven its application to other uses such as Web services, transferring data from one system to another, or ensuring that data exchange between systems is valid.
Why Should Technical Writers Learn XML?
The proliferation of various applications of XML has increased dramatically in the last few years, not the least of which is Content Management (CM). Demand for CM services will increase significantly in the next few years. In 2003, http://theWhir.com, reported that “...content management services represent an attractive growth segment for the information technology services industry.… Worldwide content management services spending will increase to more than $7.5 billion in 2007, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.8 percent.… A huge installation, customization, and training opportunity will occur during the forecast period as a new content infrastructure emerges.” Installation, customization, and training all sound like areas with potential job opportunities for technical writers and communicators. And guess what technology is compatible with many of the CM programs on the market today, and is expected to be an integral part of the growth and evolution of CM? XML.
If futuristic projections aren't good enough reasons to learn XML, some of the more practical and “here and now” reasons may be. Although there are a variety of reasons to use XML that are beyond the scope of this article, some of those most common to technical writers are included.
Reusability of content may be the single biggest reason to learn and use XML. Whether you will be plugging it into specific CM software or a less formal system of managing content, once created, the same content can be used repeatedly for different purposes and in different output formats such as Web pages, handheld devices, PDF documents, online manuals, or printer materials. This feature of XML also lends itself nicely for use in a single-source system.
Customization is another reason to use XML. Creating customizable tags and structure for your content allows you to create a system that will meet very specific needs for you or your customers. At the very least, learning about the various components of XML such as tags, elements, and attributes will give you the ability to participate (politics aside) with other team members during the planning stages of the next content management or other system that will affect you. Increasing your ability to communicate with developers and other subject matter experts is an added benefit.
Receiving a significantly higher salary can result from having XML skills. According to http://online-learning.com, technical writers with XML skills “can add an extra $19K” to their salaries. The skill set that will be expected with this higher salary may include the ability to develop XML documents, understand and work with DTDs (Document Type Definitions) and schemas, and create and work with style sheets that interact with the XML documents. If you're ready for the challenge and growth of learning a new technology, you can expect a higher salary after gaining XML experience and skill.
XML's independence of proprietary platforms and formats and its ever increasing application in the workplace means that its use will continue to grow, and with it the likelihood that you will interact with it to some degree. It sounds like it's time to start learning XML.
Information Technology:Benefits to Nursing and Patient Care
by Penny Clowe, Graduate student, University of Houston–Downtown
Nurses seek to reduce medication errors and increase patient safety. The Electronic Medical Records system (EMR) helps by serving as a foundation for a patient-focused information system. Nurses are required by their state practice act to follow “general” standards of documentation to ensure patient safety. Using EMR documentation software, nurses institute a plan of care and establish patient information management. The medical records hold all patient information regarding status, care, medication, procedures, test results, and doctor's orders that encompass the patient's hospitalization period. EMR software stores and manages this information through patient data pathways (location specific links).
Health information, because of its importance to all caregivers and health information managers (HIM), must be viewed as a universal document. Through EMR, this information becomes important for case management, as well as case reviews. EMR software tracks patient variances and provides patient care summaries specific to each provider (nurse, physician, x-ray technician, and others).
Complete information is vital to patient safety because it must be accessed for patient care decisions. The transition from handwritten documentation to EMR also improves safety and reliability of document interpretation. EMR allows instant retrieval of data for cross-tracking patient information and compiling patient summaries. For instance, EMR records and stores patient care errors, and hospitals use this data to improve error prevention strategies. EMR's data, if recorded and stored in a consistent manner, enhances interpretation and makes insurance coding easier.
The exchange of patient records between hospital departments necessitates universal care vocabularies. EMR provides that opportunity. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) promotes the use of these vocabularies and classifications. For instance, an order received for a medication could read “x2d,” which could be interpreted as “x two days” or “x two doses.” EMR software terminology would not accept this coding, and the software program would enforce user conformity by requiring complete, approved data information. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), together with nurses, physicians and other integral providers of care, will define the use of abbreviations and the need for a universal style.
Nurses benefit from EMR facilitation of patient data. From this EMR data, nurses obtain rapid overall pictures of patient status. Today, the computer records patient data during emergency situations through wireless monitoring. In the past, nurses hand-documented information while simultaneously attending to the emergency. The EMR advantage to patient data access improves decision-making such as detecting patterns and changes in patient status. Pop-up warnings alert nursing staff to abnormalities. Doctors, as well, manage patient care off site through the Web by observing the patient status information.
Most of the new technology increases patient safety and simplifies the care routine, but some technology can create extra steps for the nursing staff. One example is a new bar-code system for administering medication. The nurse scans a bracelet worn by the patient and scans the medication to verify the match. The extra steps of scanning bar codes and carrying the bar-code reader are minor inconveniences compared to the safety benefits.
Regardless of computer efficiency, standardized nursing documentation must allow for nursing clinical judgments. The nursing process implies that nurses administer care and manage the information regarding that care. Current electronic trends indicate that a computer will suggest nursing diagnosis and care plan implementations. The EMR benefit as a means to record and store information and organize data is undeniable; however, the nurse's observations and intuitive understanding of the patient should not be compromised by computer-generated patient care. While Electronic Medical Records manage patient information, the nurse interprets patient information to provide safe and compassionate patient care.
References
Van de Castle, Barbara, Jeongeun, Kim, Mavilde L.G. Pedreira, Pava, Abel, Goossen, William, Bates, David W. 2004. Information technology and patient safety in nursing practice. International Journal of Medical Informatics. Vol. 73. 543-546.
World, Heather. 2004. Off the charts. Nurseweek. September 20, 2004 .
Penny Clowe graduated from Washburn University in 1979, obtaining a bachelor of science in nursing. She has worked predominantly in the cardiovascular field of nursing. Currently, she attends graduate school full-time at UHD and is majoring in Professional Writing and Technical Communications.
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