Examines the visual manual genre, discussing main forms and functions of step-by-step and guided tour manuals in detail. Examines whether a visual manual helps computer users realize tasks faster and more accurately than a non-visual manual. Finds no effects on accuracy, but speedier task execution by 35% for visual manuals. Concludes there is no…

Compares support calls and related costs for customers who received quality documentation for a messaging system with calls from users who received condensed, inadequate documentation. Estimates that using quality documentation saves the company $1 million annually. (RS)

Examines the rapidly growing role for technical communicators in the computer industry as members of the external design team. Describes the kinds of decisions they are responsible for with regard to all phases of product development--as user advocates, usability testers, screen designers, and online documentation specialists. (KEH)

Explores the varying degrees of success that technical communicators had in different geographic and organizational settings of three development efforts within one company. Finds that a high degree of integration between technical communicators and developers can result in improved information products but that the organizational framework, work…

Examines in-house documentation situations in which software manual writers and project managers intersect the manual writing project with ongoing organizational dynamics. Analyses two strategies that in-house writers need for project management: conducting contextual audience analyses and acting as liaisons in their workplaces. (KEH)

Suggests that investing more presales dollars in timely, accurate, and complete documentation may significantly reduce the total cost of customer support. Shows how judiciously increasing investment costs significantly reduced the avoidable costs of supporting customers of a computer software documentation product, and reduced the total costs to a…

Over the past several years, technical communicators have been struggling to change some of the stylistic traditions inherited from scientific discourse. Rhetoricians, writing teachers, and psychologists all agree that the use of analogy and first- or second-person sentence construction make for more effective communication than the absence of…