STC Summit 2016

Augmented reality (AR) and wearable technology show promise for maintenance tasks, especially for field jobs that require technicians to use their hands. It can result in big cost savings. This progression will discuss advancement in AR standards and guidelines for technical communicators through the OASIS AR in Information Products. We will also demonstrate progress on actual AR documentation prototypes. We presented an AR in Technical Communications Proof of Concept last year. The discussion this year is about the journey from a POC to prototypes, including a short demo to show our work.

Customers use search technology to find the information they need in your documentation, so it's important to keep search in mind as you develop content. Does your authoring tool mandate a certain search tool, or do you have other choices? How do you create writing standards geared toward search optimization? Is your content publicly available and thus searchable on Google? In this session, we will discuss these and other search-related issues.

Users consume and utilize mobile help content very differently than they do on a computer. As content spreads to mobile, the help we provide has to cater to the special needs of mobile users. What are the current issues and challenges facing technical communicators trying to reach this audience? What are effective strategies for reaching a mobile user without getting in the way? In this progression, we’ll discuss the challenges of current mobile help methods, strategies to deliver mobile help, plus some fresh ideas to explore.

Today, baby boomers account for 31% of jobs in the United States. However, roughly 10,000 people a day reach full retirement age. And many of them are leaving the workplace, taking decades of experience, expertise, and history with them. The same trend is happening in many countries. What issues are going to arise from this departure? And how can we identify and capture the information before the baby boomers depart to finish that novel, plant that garden, or travel to remote parts of the world? Join this progression to see the potential issues from different points of view (retiree, manager, and coworker) and hear ideas and best practices on addressing the problem.