TracyC's blog

Tracy's blog 7: document design and technical marketing documents

Posted April 12th, 2008 by TracyC
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Technical marketing documents are produced with specific attention paid to document design. As we discussed last week in relation to rhetoric and technical marketing documents, writers and designers make a series of key decisions related to the product, the manufacturer, target audiences, availability of resources used to produce the document, and the document’s point of distribution.

Document design: the basics

Tracy's blog 6: white paper research, revisited

Posted March 20th, 2008 by TracyC
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Since you're about to submit Draft 2 of the white paper, I would like to direct your attention to items we discussed a couple of weeks ago related to research -- especially emphasis on including several types of professionally-oriented sources. When doing research for a document that is as professionally-based and topic/audience-driven as a white paper generally is, it's essential to your white paper's overall success that your research activities are both extensive and intensive. Give

Tracy's blog 5: suggested white paper structure, content/approach

Posted March 3rd, 2008 by TracyC
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Listed below is a suggested format for your white paper. This covers both length and content:

General structure of white papers

Executive summary: This section is usually 1-3 paragraphs in length, and provides a general outline for the white paper. It will present the paper’s position, and often discuss research methodologies used.

Tracy's blog 4: sample annotated bibliography

Posted February 25th, 2008 by TracyC

Here's a sample annotated bibliography. You'll see that I followed the same basic format for each entry: bibliographic entry first (sequenced in alphabetical order), followed by a 50-100 word annotation in which I describe the information presented within that source, analyze the significance of that information, and assess that source's usability where my hypothetical project is concerned.

Tracy's blog 3: (re-)visiting some important open-source-related issues/questions

Posted February 18th, 2008 by TracyC
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Last Tuesday's readings explored the the open source movement, its origins, and how it relates those proprietary options more recognizable to us -- namely, Microsoft and Microsoft products. Here are some issues/questions that you may have considered, along with some issues that we will consider at some point during the course of the White Paper Project:

Tracy's blog 2: a bit more regarding documentation review and usability testing

Posted January 30th, 2008 by TracyC
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Activities for tomorrow and the following Tuesday involve usability
testing for your quick guides. I've placed each of you into a
two-person team, except for one group that has three people due to an odd number of students in the class.

Tracy's blog 1: a bit more about Week 3 activities....

Posted January 19th, 2008 by TracyC
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This
coming week’s scheduled activities are designed to move you through the
planning stages of the Quick Guide Project to the project’s preliminary
writing and review stages. We will continue to work with project research – both of the product and of user characteristics and communities.