I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Clippy the animated paper clip. Although he was officially named "ClipIt", the talking tutor became known as "Clippy" to the millions of Microsoft Office users. These same users became increasingly frustrated with Clippy, who popped up with offers of help every time anyone opened a new document or spreadsheet or presentation, eventually led to all kinds of web-based abuses of the poor little Paper Clip Who Only Wants to Help.

I'll admit, Clippy's behavior bugged me, but I was so taken with his facial expressions that I always kind of felt bad sending him away. Anyway, Clippy took a back seat in later versions of Microsoft Office, so I hadn't thought about him in a while, when STC Secretary Erin Lowe off-handedly mentioned that she actually knew the man who invented Clippy.

I was very excited to hear this, and Erin graciously agreed to arrange a meeting so that I could talk to Clippy's inventor about the creative process behind designing a user experience like Clippy.

A few weeks later, I had the pleasure of actually meeting Kevan J. Atteberry, the graphic artist who first developed Clippy the Overly Eager Office Supply Unit. Over lunch, Erin and I asked Kevan about his career, his role as an artistic mind in the tech comm field, and how he feels about Clippy getting clipped.

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Were you one of those kids who doodled on everything and always knew that you’d be an artist?

Yes, I was. I still am. I just got out of an hour-long meeting, and I came away from it with several notepad pages full of sketches and no decipherable written notes (was drawing all over my notepad.) It’s hard for me to sit here with this paper tablecloth and NOT draw on it.

Where did you get your start practicing art as a career? Was your first job in the art field?

My first job in the graphics arts field was working for Paccar. I started with them when I was about 22 or 23. I worked there for about three years as a Corporate Graphics Analyst, and then I was laid off like everyone else. I went to work for myself then, and formed my own company, Aardvark Graphics. I had that for 18 years, and it was very successful. I still owned it when I started working for Microsoft. I’ve since worked for a few start-ups, like Giant Campus and Smilebox, doing character-driven animation. I now own my own business, but I continue to contract for Microsoft. And I illustrate children’s books.

How many children’s books have you done? Tell us a bit about them.

I’ve done several picture books in the educational world and have several trade picture books out or coming out soon.  You can Amazon me  and find some books I’ve illustrated.  I am now working on the sequel to a middle grade novel that came out last year and have another picture book coming out this fall.  And I am trying to sell a couple of my own ideas too.  Pictures are easy.  Words are HARD!

Your work is so creative and fun. Is it difficult to work for a large tech company?

No, not really, I’m just a vendor. I’m not doing the “funnest” work right now but it is steady income while I pursue the projects I love.  The great thing about not being an FTE is that I don’t get emotionally invested in the company or project. I don’t have to attend as many meetings or work the long, long hours. When I leave work at 5PM, I really leave work. I don’t take any troubles with me. That’s the great thing about being an orange-badge. [Editor - that’s Microsoft speech for ‘contractor’]

On to Clippy. I have to confess that I love Clippy.

That makes three of you. A little family of Clippy-fans.

Really? Only three?

People have a strong reaction to Clippy.

That’s good, right? You love him or you hate him.

People mostly hate him. But I like him. I created him when I was working on Microsoft Bob. And yes, creating something that people react passionately to is better than creating something that no one cares about.

It wasn’t Clippy’s fault that he was pushy. Did he ever end up annoying you?

Most of the programs that I use for graphic design are based on Macs. Clippy was never the default support character on Mac, and I barely use the Office products anyway. So Clippy never really got on my nerves. 

How does the process work for designing a character like that? Did you work with other designers to create him?

There were several designers that I collaborated with. I originally designed Clippy and his original animations. He was animated by some one else. He was chosen through an elaborate battery of tests from among about 250 potential characters.

What kind of characters?

Oh, among mine there was a gremlin. And a coffee mug. And a stapler.

We had a couple of social psychologists from Stanford come in and work with us on finding the most appealing character. We thought some other things would be cute, too, like talking bugs, but semantically, realized that ‘bug’ wasn’t a good name to associate with our programs.

Did you have any control over his activities, or can we blame his eager-beaver omnipresence on engineers?

I created all of his expressions and sketched out his original animation responses, but I didn’t have any say in how he performed.

What about his successor, that puppy that I feel guilty sending away? Did you have anything to do with that?

No. I was long gone by then.

I have been a Ph.D. student in technical communication for more than three years. Very often, I receive such questions from my friends as “What exactly is technical communication?” or “Is it about fixing computers?” or “Do you guys just write for the engineers?” In fact, it’s not only the “outsiders” who don’t quite understand our field. We, the people inside the world of tech comm., often struggle on who we are and where we are heading.

I’m very lucky to be part of the innovative technical communication department at the University of Washington (UWTC). As one of the very few TC programs located in the Engineering school, UWTC resides in the traditional landscape of technical writing and embraces the invaluable knowledge from related fields such as engineering, psychology, and communication.

My on-going dissertation, QuikScan, has been the result of this multi-disciplinary approach. QuikScan, which I presented last year at the STC-PSC June meeting, is a set of document formatting techniques that can be implemented in print and online documents to facilitate reading and information seeking. It uses multiple within-document summaries and highlighting to emphasize the superordinate gist of a document and provide easy accessibility for locating details. While deeply rooted in rhetorical theories, QuikScan situates itself in the context of design, social communication, and user experience. On one hand, the knowledge I acquired from classes inspired the project. On the other hand, the two-year old project has shed some light, causing me to re-examine technical communication. It has prompted me to frame technical communication in a way that is not widely adopted in most TC programs in English departments.

Through my conversation with peers in the field, I have generally encountered two ways of framing our field: the deductive approach and the inductive approach. In the deductive approach, people start from the term “technical communication,” and categorize it in many layers and facets. This approach is usually rooted on technical writing, literacy, and audience analysis. It is centered on the communicative activities between the addresser and the addressee.

In the inductive approach, however, people collect different pieces of research and practices all together and use “technical communication” as an umbrella term. This method absorbs much knowledge that resides outside the traditional sense of “technical communication”. Take UWTC as an example: we conduct research on a wide variety of topics covering information design, Internet research, eye tracking, user-centered design, humanitarian relief, etc. We are excited to touch the cutting-edge frontier that wasn’t part of technical communication initially. However, the inductive approach falls short on seeing the relationships among the different pieces, and in distinguishing technical communication from other fields. Neither of the two approaches gives us a clear answer to two important questions: Who are we? Who we are not?

The innovations in communication technologies and processes have led to the continuous evolution of technical communication. Based on my experience in the TC field, and my on-going learning in my dissertation, I shall make some recommendations here on framing technical communication to suit the needs of the rapidly-changing field.

I believe that today’s technical communication ought to be built on the foundation of rhetoric, communication sciences, design, and user experience.

Rhetoric

There has been a paradigm shift from calling our field “technical writing” to referring to it as “technical communication.” For instance, Technical Communication Quarterly, one of the major academic journals in the field, transformed its name from The Technical Writing Teacher (Coney, 1997). However, the basic principles and knowledge of literacy and writing should be the center of any communication process. Coney (1997) generalized the most important aspects of technical communication theories as audience, the writing process, and style. Arguably, the value of rhetoric is not writing-specific; rather, its principles are useful and important in many communication activities, such as user research and web design.

Communication Sciences

The term “communication,” has distinct interpretations, depending on which academic disciplines is involved. Some consider electrical engineering “communication”, while others see it as referring to something like mass media.

Within the field of technical communication, the term “communication” has a specific meaning. Generally speaking, there are two threads in communication sciences that are directly tied with technical communication: communication as a social phenomenon, and communication as a cognitive process. Technical communication is not solely about delivering technical information. Rather, it is the holistic process of crafting communication messages and communication procedures to the targeted addressee. Be it web development, software documentation, content management, budget proposal, or digital media, technical communication has a central focus on communication as a social phenomenon. As professional communicators, we work in the intersection between information and people, neither of which can be separated from the other. The hardware involved in this process should not be seen as independent, but be considered as a component of the communication activities.

Creating content and understanding information is not only a social process, but also a cognitive activity. Technical communicators have been studying how people read documents, comprehend texts, search for information, and use products. All of these communication activities involve the complex process of cognitive processing. In-depth knowledge in cognitive psychology is needed to improve the quality of professional communication.

Design

As technical communicators, our work involves various types of design. At the UWTC, design is one of the most important topics in graduate research. A broad understanding of design ought to include not only the design of artifacts like web sites, database systems, or digital games, but also the design of processes like the information flow in an organization, the way multiple design artifacts work together, etc.

User Experience

“Usability” is usually the term used to describe the effort of making a product usable for end users. If you glance at a technical communication curriculum, you often see “usability” sprinkled in here and there. Nevertheless, there is a substantial difference between usability and user experience. Usability, as its name suggests, is a product-centric view focusing on whether a product is usable or not.

User experience, on the other hand, shifts our perspective from product to users. User experience is becoming an approach more suited to today’s user-centered communication. Technical communicators in the industry have been using various methods to create and deliver the best experience for the users. The term “users” ought to be understood in a broad sense. It includes not only people who use a computer, but also people who read a document, watch a multimedia presentation, or listen to a speech.

As mentioned earlier, the deductive approach of defining the field fails to embrace the rapidly-widening scope of technical communication. The inductive approach fails to see how these pieces borrowed from neighboring disciplines correlate to each other. From my perspective, rhetoric, communication sciences, design, and user experience are closely related to each other. It is this inter-relationship that forms a solid foundation for my view of technical communication.

Today around the world, we are witnessing the dramatic change of technical communication programs. Framing the field is not only a step forward to meet the evolving challenges in the information age, but also a way to connect the new frontier with our cherished heritage.

Reference

Coney, M. B (1997). Technical communication theory: an overview. Foundations for teaching technical communication: theory, practice, and program design, edited by Staples, K. and Ornatowski, C. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

About the Author

Quan Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Technical Communication at the University of Washington. He has published and presented in the field of information design, Internet studies, usability, and cross-cultural communication. He is the recipient of 2005 Souther and White Scholarship, and a member of STC Sigma Tau Chi.

What is your official position on the STC Board?

I am currently serving as the Membership team leader.

What are your official duties as a member of the board?

Board members attend a monthly meeting, are encouraged to attend every STC meeting, carry out the duties of their particular area, and provide status reports to the rest of the board.  As the Membership team leader, I work to help retain current members and to recruit new members. I keep track of our membership mailing lists, answer questions from members, and conduct membership drives and events. I also conduct SIN (shy, inactive, or new) SIG meetings. These meetings are designed to help members get started with STC.

How long have you been in this position? How long have you been a member of STC?

This is my second term as the Membership team leader. I have been an STC member for about 12 years.

What is your job/career outside of STC?

I've worked as a technical writer and editor for over 10 years. I’ve worked in several different industries, including a large IT department, a software development tools vendor, and a manufacturer of biotech research equipment. I’ve had opportunities to do a lot of different things, including: writing manuals, Help, Web development, programmer documentation, and photography. Last fall, I went to work for Attachmate (in Seattle) as a technical writer.

Do you feel like the work you do with STC benefits your career in any way? Or vice versa? 

Being an STC member early on in my career was extremely beneficial. I learned a lot about the field by attending educational sessions and reading Technical Communication and Intercom. Attending STC sessions and meetings also led to other opportunities. (After a very positive STC educational session conducted by a UW professor, I decided to get a UW Technical Writing and Editing certificate.) I continue to learn new things and keep up with current trends by reading the STC journals and by attending STC chapter meetings, conferences, and educational sessions.

Volunteering on the competition and the membership team has also been very beneficial. Working on the competition as a judge for the last five years has not only been a lot of fun – it’s been a great learning experience! As the membership team leader, I have met a lot of technical communicators and made some good friends in the field.

What have you done to bring new things to the STC table?

I borrowed an idea from the Lone Star Chapter and started the SIN SIG, a networking group for new members that meets before each chapter meeting. (SIN SIG stands for shy, inactive, or new members special interest group).

This SIG is intended to make it easy for new members to get started and for anyone else (nonmembers, inactive, or even seasoned members) to find out more about how they can benefit from an STC membership.

The format for our SIN SIG meetings is simple. Attendees take turns introducing themselves to the rest of the group, and then a presenter talks about STC topics that new and potential members might not know about. After the SIN SIG meeting, the new people can network with the members who've come for the regular meeting, and then the full group is seated for the dinner and speaker. Chairs of the various committees meet and greet all of the attendees and help them associate names with faces. One advantage of having everyone network right before the meeting is that no one has to sit with a table of strangers—all new people will know at least a few others from the earlier session, as well as the speaker.

What do you enjoy the most about STC?

I enjoy the company and discussions with other people in my field. STC is the best place that I know of to meet and network with other technical communicators. I also enjoy the learning opportunities that STC provides.

If you were to meet someone who was interested in filling your post next year on the STC Board, what kind of skills would you tell them they needed to have? What advice would you pass along to them?

I think the most important things you can bring are enthusiasm and creativity. Most of the membership team leader tasks are not difficult, and are of an administrative nature (updating membership lists, answering questions from members). There is a lot of room for creativity – your ideas for attracting new members or for retaining existing members will be very welcome.

I have to confess - I'm terrible at writing resumes. Sure, I can help someone who is mostly illiterate pull SOMETHING together, but when it comes to writing my own resume, I needed help.

So I got it. In the form of Jill Walser, a local resume writer and interview coach. Jill was able to parse the important information out of my cluttered, 4-page resume, and massage it into a concise, 2-page resume that highlighted my strenghts and accomplishments. Immediately after Jill reworked my resume, I got the first job that I applied to.

But the idea of using someone to write your resume, even if it's just a tweak here and there, sort of bugs me. I'm a writer. Shouldn't I be able to write something as simple as a resume?

I finally asked Jill to give me her opinion on some of my more burning questions regarding resumes and resume writers. And this is what she said.

Why should someone hire a resume writer?

People who obtain a professionally written resume are (hopefully!) ensured of several things. Primarily, they are ensured that there are no glaring NO!s on the resume like misspellings, misused words, lack of focus, lack of discernible achievements, etc. Additionally, a reader other than oneself is an absolute requirement when it comes to knowing if ones resume is understandable by others. People get into patterns of expressing themselves that make perfect sense to them and to their niche industry, but no sense at all to others.

You'd hire a professional resume writer for the same reason that you'd hire an attorney to write up your will. Yes, you could probably write it yourself, but you might forget something important and you only get one chance to get it right. Either way, you're dead.

How hard can it possibly be to write a resume?

Writing ones own resume can be excruciatingly painful. Like pulling your own teeth. Hours and hours of wandering through websites, reading books, looking at other people's resumes, getting 10 different and conflicting ideas about what must be included, struggling. Doing a "pretty good" job might be OK if one is an engineer, or software developer. As long as they get the basic facts down and don't look like they have third-grade writing skills, their resumes are probably OK. If, however, one is a marketing, sales or administrative professional or *gasp* someone who writes for a living, having a less-than-perfect resume can be the kiss of death. 

I have a copywriter opening at work this week. You can bet that the first thing I'll look at is resume quality, even before the quality of their experience. Resumes have to do so much. They are a marketing piece, a business document, a way to convey your personality, and your only opportunity to brand yourself as perfect for the job before the hiring manager meets you. How hard could that be? Exactly.

Isn't having someone else write your resume kind of... dishonest?

Resume writing has become one of the last professional tasks that people feel should still be clandestine. I'm pro-professional. Why should I fix my own car, put 18 million of those little foil things in my hair, give myself a massage, etc.? Sure, I could do all those things myself, but why on earth would I want to? A professional spends hours and hours training and experimenting on other, unsuspecting victims, before she has her craft perfected enough to start charging for it.

On the other hand, I have no problem with people pretending that they wrote their own resume. Its sort of like me telling my mom that I spent hours cleaning before she came by for a visit. Its *kind of* true.

What kind of mistakes do people usually make on their resumes?

What kind of mistakes DON'T they make? Trite objectives, self-aggrandisement, segments that "break" in the wrong places. My personal favorites are those who spell "detail oriented" incorrectly and those who claim to be Mangers. Once a month, I do a search on Craigslist's resume section for Mangers and randomly pick a resume to rewrite and email to the person for free. Reactions are amazingly mixed! Of note, I have yet to meet an actual professional Manger. I keep hoping.

What kind of results do YOU typically get with your reworked resumes?

My customer's resumes get results! They are called in for interviews and offered jobs. They are more confident in their application documents and it shows! The coolest part of this gig is that every single week I get at least one, "I got the job!" email. It's very thrilling to me. The act of going over the resume, answering my homework questions, talking about networking and their career vision makes them better at interviewing, so they get more job offers.

How important is a cover letter?

Its crucial. Its the best way of showing a little glimpse of your personality and demonstrating that you have done your research and really want to work for THAT company. Its a way of showing that you have gone the extra mile to spell their name right. I cannot tell you how disinterested I am in hiring people who cannot even cut and paste my name correctly. There are NO Ms. Waslers that work for my company people! Plus, in the bulleted world of resumes, it's a nice way of showing that you (well, I) can put a few sentences together.

What's the most that someone should pay to have their resume professionally written?

A million dollars. That would definitely be too much. Pricing is all over the place with resume writers. It's hard to know what to charge. Resume writer's qualifications and backgrounds are quite varied as well. I've met resume writers who were actually out-of-work novelists, trying to make some extra money. I may be the only corporate recruiter with a resume business out there. I haven't yet met another.

There's one woman out there who writes "How-to" resume books for a living. From what I've seen, she's not so hot at actually writing resumes. And personality fit is crucial. If you don't feel your resume writer "gets" you, its going to be a frustrating experience. So it's hard to compare value. I will say that every time I've raised my prices, it's had absolutely no impact on customer traffic. My rates currently range between $95 - $245, depending on employment level. I've done resumes for people with horror stories about paying $400 for a resume that looks terrible. I feel their pain. $400 for a resume that looks fabulous and gets results is not too much. $95 for a resume that sucks and lands in the trash is too much. 

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