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October Meeting Preview:
SandCHI Brings Usability Home
By Elaine Tsang, VP-Programs

Click here for October meeting details

First of all, what is SandCHI (pronounced san'-de-ki), anyway? It is the local chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction. Appropriately, as the group is dedicated to examining issues in human factors, ergonomics, usability, and general ease of use, SandCHI (San Diego Computer-Human Interaction) is much simpler to say and to remember.

With so much interest in the topic of usability among our own STC members, we have a great deal in common with SandCHI. So we thought it would be fun to have some of their experts prepare a crash course in usability for our group.

Drawing on years of experience, we’ll hear from three heavy hitters: Dave O’Brien, a manager of Human Factors at Qualcomm; Garrett Goldfield, a usability manager at Intuit; and Michael Korn, a senior user interface designer at AOL.

What do they have in store for us? We’ll learn why usability "ain’t just for software" and participate in their spoof of a classic show, "Mystery Usability Theater." Doubling the fun, they will present their "top ten usability dos" followed by their "top ten usability don’ts."

If usability has been a concern for your organization or you want to help your company be more effective, then don’t miss the October meeting. [Meeting details.]

Attendees: 61

Standing: Sharon Bradshaw and Walter Hanig

Standing: Simrita Dhir and Walter Hanig

Speaker Scott Hamlow, Adobe Systems

From left: Sharon Bradshaw, Mike McGraw, Nadine Barter Bowlus, Alison Butler

• Vice President of Finance Lance-Robert asked for volunteers to help with the check-in process at each month's meeting, including entering each attendee into a computer database and distributing tickets for each month's drawing.
  
  
• Vice President of Professional Development Audrey Johns polled members present regarding interest in possible training courses to be offered this year. Topics under consideration include HTML, Dreamweaver 4, Framemaker 6.0 and 7.0, Photoshop (including basic 1 and 2, color correction, and printing), Illustrator, Indesign, a jobs workshop, indexing, 508 documentation, Webworks Publishing Pro, Go Live 6.0, Live Motion 2.0, RoboHelp, multilingual translation, Framemaker-to-XML conversion, and Intro to XML.
  
  
• Signature Associate Editor Sharon Bradshaw invited members to submit their writing to the chapter newsletter, explaining that there are mentors available for assistance and that often articles run in our local newsletter are picked up by newsletters from other chapters and published again in those.
  
  She also mentioned a need for a FLASH expert to help with the animated treasure chest in the new online editions of Signature.
  
  
• Vice President of Membership Simrita Dhir reminded members of the New Member Dinner on October 2 at the Kings Garden Restaurant, 1066 Pacific Heights Blvd., San Diego 92121.
  
  
• Web Site and Library Manager Suzy Hosie was unable to attend; Walter spoke on her behalf. Suzy seeks assistance for the chapter Web site—including someone qualified in HTML coding, in converting text to HTML, and in background scripting for the reservation system.
  
  
• Vice President of Programs Elaine Tsang described some upcoming meeting topics, including e-help in December, and productive learning and leisure in January. She welcomes requests for possible meeting topics.

Announcements

After remarks by the new council members, chapter President Hanig made the following announcements.

• There will be a southern California competition this year; check the chapter Web page for details. Judges are needed. [Click here for competition update.]
  
  
• A Region 8 conference is tentatively planned for January in Las Vegas. [Click here for conference update.]
  
  
• The San Diego Community College District contacted Walter with a request for someone to interview with a student about how to get into the field of technical writing.

• combined product
• full XML support
• workgroup collaboration
• ease-of-use enhancements
• accessibility enhancements (so that saving files into PDF format really works)

• powerful XML authoring/publishing
• scalable, powerful authoring
• multichannel publishing
• WYSIWYG editing
• structured and unstructured editing modes (so that, in structured Framemaker, you can work with XML without working with XML)
• repurposing information, which can be applied to different applications automatically

• master pages that can accommodate up to 12 running headers and footers
• the possibility of more than 50 master pages
• master pages that can be reordered in a dialogue box
• use of tables to set up master pages formatting rules
• saving files as PDF that actually work
• ability to set up many different pack job options
• preselected zoom size on page opening (so that document opens with correct page size and width)
• bookmarks that can be placed through multiple levels
• ability to generate tagged PDF for such devices as screen readers and palm pilots.
• automatic tagged PDF reflows with the click of a button during zoom-not repagination, just changing views

• Celeste Rutherford won a Wally Buck, good for one STC meeting and dinner.
• Cheryl Nemeth won FrameMaker 7.0 Classroom in a Book, donated by Technical Standards.
• Mike McGraw, Nadine Barter Bowlus, Sharon Bradshaw, and Alison Butler won Framemaker 7.0 tryout disks donated by Adobe Systems.

Special thanks for Lynn Sornson for volunteering as librarian for the evening.