Next Meeting: Wednesday September 11, 2002

Usability 101
Elaine Randolph

Usability problems cost companies millions of dollars each year in technical support, returned products, and lost sales.

OCSTC Immediate Past President Elaine Randolph will discuss the importance of usability and how technical communicators can become usability advocates. Elaine will provide information about various usability methods and when to use them during the engineering lifecycle. She will also share success stories about how technical communicators have been gradually introducing usability methods at Unisys Corporation. Finally, Elaine will revert to her past life as a librarian and present a modified "book talk" so that you can read more about usability.

Elaine Randolph is a Senior Member of STC who has been a technical communicator for 20 years. When Elaine first began working with mainframe computers in the early 1980s, she became aware of how unintuitive the interfaces and documentation were. As the world gradually switched to the Windows operating system, she noticed that interfaces were still difficult to use and that she had to invest heavily in third-party documentation to be able to use software effectively. She has always been a user advocate, because she feels that we are all end users of products, computer-related and otherwise.

Join us and learn how to write for your users!

STC-Berkeley Chapter Meeting Details
Vo's Restaurant in downtown Oakland, is within easy walking distance to BART, is wheelchair accessible, and has both street and nearby garage parking.

Networking and conversation start at 6:00 p.m., and dinner at 6:30 p.m. If you want to eat dinner, reservations are required and must be received no later than 12:00 noon the Monday before the meeting. Reservations are necessary so that we can order the right amount of food. Do not contact the restaurant.

RSVP Online
Use your credit card to order meeting reservations via the chapter Website.
The meeting fee with dinner is $18 for members, $15 for student members, and $21 for nonmembers. If you come for the program only, starting at 7:30 p.m., the fee is $12 for members and nonmembers, and $10 for students. If you are not eating, payments may be made at the door.

RSVP by Mail
Send checks to Berkeley STC, P.O. Box 1007, Berkeley, 94701.