Writing/presentation sample for Barbara Heninger:
In May, 2004, I gave a presentation at the Society for Technical Communication's 51st annual conference, describing the results of a series of usability evaluations and surveys about what terminology users use when searching for different types of information.
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About the Presentation
Cadence Design Systems has many types of documentation in their SourceLink support website and online documentation libraries. While watching users in usability tests of these systems, we noticed that users didn't understand some of the categories that support or publications had created for their documents. I then led a group to evaluate which categories made sense to our users -- and which did not.
My presentation described the study methods (focus groups, surveys, and usability tests) and the results, including not only general categories into which most users seemed to expect to find information, but observations about what other cues helped or hindered users when searching for particular types of information.
The presentation was attended by approximately 45 persons. 43 completed evaluations and, on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), rated my portion of the presentation content 4.20 and the delivery 4.27; the average scores for all speakers at the conference were 4.17 for content and 4.11 for delivery.
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