Critique #3 Postmortem

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This critique was easier than the other critiques, primarily because of the small amount of source content that we were required to analyze. I made changes to the draft that I had ready on Tuesday, because I had not referenced an external source in my analysis. The requirements for this critique were the first that did not refer to including an outside source, so I assumed that such a reference was not required. It was nice to have the time to add it in after that requirement was explicitly stated on Tuesday.

I started this assignment on the day it was assigned, and finished it (in the form that I had ready on Tuesday) on the next day. I revised it based on Tuesday’s class yesterday and this morning. This time frame was accelerated because I was focusing on a large project for another class and could not afford to dedicate a large chunk of time near yesterday, May 1 (which was when the other project was due).

I was surprised to find that the video did not work in the instructions. I expected the instructions to be bad, but not quite that bad. However, as far as the actual composition of the assignment went, nothing surprised me, given that this is the third critique we have done.

The hardest part was finding the time to write the paper, due to the project mentioned earlier. The easiest part was the summary, because there was very little content in the instructions we were analyzing.

If someone were to ask me for advice about this assignment, I would tell them to follow the time frame I did, especially if they are as busy as I am. Following this time frame allowed me to focus on my other project without having a paper for another class hanging over my head.

Critique #2 Postmortem

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This critique went a little bit easier than the first critique, mainly because I knew what to expect. It was nice having the feedback from the first one available so that I could avoid making the same mistakes this time around.

I started this assignment last Friday, when I began reading the essay. I read a little bit each day, until yesterday when I finished it and wrote the paper. I put the final touches on it this morning. This is a fairly typical time frame for me, and it seems to work well.

Nothing surprised me about this assignment. Last time it was difficult to compress the amount of information into one page, so I knew that coming in this time. Knowing this, I kept mental notes of the most important information as I was reading through the article so that the summary would be easier.

However, the hardest part was still keeping it to one page. I didn’t go enormously over this time, but I found myself having to reword things multiple times to be as concise as possible. The easiest part was reaching the required length; there was so much content in this article that the summary itself could have easily spanned multiple pages.

I proofread my paper by printing it out and marking it up with a red pen, like I always do. I read through it myself about three times, and had Mr. Long read through it during his office hours this morning.

I will start earlier for the final critique assignment, knowing that I will not have an opportunity to rewrite it. I will take it in to Mr. Long’s office before the morning that it is due so that I can get feedback earlier. I will make sure that I keep mental notes in the same way that I did for this assignment; the summary was made easy because of this. I will also be sure to split the reading up into multiple days again. I would advise someone doing this assignment to do the same; it is much easier to read this article in multiple blocks instead of trying to knock it out in one sitting.

Proposal for Major Writing Assignment #3: Writing Instructions

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The following are three potential tours of Waco that I am proposing for my third major writing assignment.

1) Tour down University Parks
Potential stops:
– The Ferrell Center
– Baylor Ballpark
– The suspension bridge
– Waco Vietnam Memorial
– Cameron Park
Notes:
– This could be fun for those getting around on foot or by bike. It is not a particularly short distance, but it could provide some good exercise!

2) Colleges in Waco
Potential stops:
– Baylor
– TSTC
– MCC
– TCU (It used to be in Waco!)
Notes:
– I think this tour would be interesting mostly because I did not know that TCU used to be in Waco. I’m curious to see where the campus was before it was destroyed in a fire.

3) “First” churches in Waco
Potential stops:
– First Baptist Church of Waco
– First Presbyterian Church of Waco
– First United Methodist Church of Waco
– First Church of Christ Science
– First Lutheran Church
Notes:
– There are so many “first” churches here. Why not visit them all in one go?

Good & Bad Instructions

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In this post I will analyze two examples of instructions found online, one that represents a good set of instructions, and one that is not so good.

The good set of instructions is titled “How to Make a Kindle Paperwhite Protective Book Case” and can be found here: http://snapguide.com/guides/make-a-kindle-paperwhite-protective-book-case. As the title suggests, the instructions walk you through how to create a case for an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite out of a book. These instructions are good for the following reasons.
– The final product is clearly identified both at the beginning of the instructions and at the end.
– All of the necessary materials and tools are identified in a picture in the very first slide of the instructions. They are also clearly enumerated in the “Supplies” tab.
– There is no indication of how long it will take, but by simply reading through the instructions quickly you can determine that it will not be a very short process – the longest step by far will be gluing all the pages together.
– This is very obviously going to be a solo job.
– The steps are in a logical sequence – it progresses from collecting the materials, to cutting out the pages, then to gluing.
– The steps are clear and concise; there are only 8 slides, and each one states clearly what you should be doing.
– There are no safety warnings, but perhaps there should be, especially regarding the “sharp razor knife.”
– There are no age requirements, but again perhaps there should be because of the knife.
– There are sufficient visual aids included with each step

The bad set of instructions is titled “how to take screen shots” and can be found here: http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-take-screen-shots. Using the same categories as above, let’s determine why these instructions are so awful.
– The final product is visible but not clearly identified; the first step shows a screenshot, but nothing identifies it as what you are trying to create.
– The materials listed are not necessary for taking screenshots.
– No tools are listed.
– There is no indication of how long it will take, but reading through the instructions makes it clear that it will not take long.
– This is clearly a solo activity
– The steps are in a logical sequence, but there are additional steps included that are completely unnecessary (notably: copying the image into MS Paint, and uploading it to the Internet)
– The steps are not clear at all. The writer of the instructions assumes that everyone will be using a computer that has a “prt sc sys rq” button on it. Many computers do not have this button, or have different text on it. Also, he highlights the “fn” button because apparently it needs to be pressed on his laptop, but that is definitely not the case for all computers. The steps are also ineffective because of the vast amount of misspellings and grammar mistakes (e.g. “ya i know never head of it but it is their!”)
– There are no safety warnings, but none are necessary
– There are no age requirements, but none are necessary
– There are visual aids, but they are not applicable to all computers (as stated above), so they are not useful.

Major Writing Assignment #2 Postmortem

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This major writing assignment was a little bit easier than the first one, mostly because I knew what to expect. I planned out my time a little bit better, but still ended up putting on the final touches the morning of the due date. One major thing that made it easier was that it didn’t rely on a third-party for an interview.

I started this assignment on Sunday morning at about 9:00. I completed it at about noon today (Tuesday). This time frame was very similar to how I approached major writing assignment #1, and it seems to work well for me.

The main thing that surprised me about this assignment was how much time it took. I thought, judging by MWA #1, that it would go by much faster, but the screenshots and especially the flowchart took a lot of time. It was also somewhat surprising how long my paper ended up being; I didn’t expect it to exceed the suggested length by so much.

The hardest part was definitely drawing the flowchart. It wasn’t that difficult in and of itself, but it took quite a bit of time, and the work was tedious and repetitive. The easiest part was the analysis of the design. I am personally interested in web design, so I enjoyed taking a close look at a professional website, and analyzing its strengths and weaknesses.

I proofread my paper about 2.5 times. The .5 time was a very quick read through. For the other two times, I printed out the document and edited it with a red pen. I like doing this because I can walk away from my computer and read through the entire paper without distractions. During the second proofread, I read it aloud.

For the next major writing assignment, I would like to finish a bit earlier. I like the starting time, because it definitely gives me enough to finish without losing focus on the assignment at hand, so I would keep that the same. If someone asked me for advice about this paper, I would tell him or her to get the flowchart out of the way early; it was definitely the most tedious part, and doing it early would give me a good overview of the structure of the site, before even writing any of the content of the essay.

Chicken Saddles Website Analysis

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The website http://www.mbldesigns.com/chicken_aprons.html is rather ineffective for several reasons, but it is not entirely bad. The content that it contains is sufficient to communicate with the reader the essential information. It is fairly easy to find information about what the product, prices, shipping, and how to purchase. However, there is so much superfluous content that it distracts from the website’s primary purpose. There is both too much text and too many images.

The structure is very flat. All of the content is contained on the landing page, and any links either are for email or direct to third-party sites. This excludes the navigation bar at the top, which allows the user to view other products from the same person. In one sense the structure is good, because no important content is more than three clicks away from the landing page, but on the other hand having everything on one page is overwhelming and detracts from the overall effectiveness.

The voice is casual and in the first person. This makes the website feel personal, but not professional. The author is not operating a large business, but changing the voice to be more professional might convince wary buyers to be more comfortable.

The website design is almost exclusively bad. According to the source HTML, it was written in 2003. The website uses almost no custom styling; that is, it uses whatever font the browser uses for a default (in the case of Internet Explorer it is a serif font), the tables have borders that were common with websites in the 1990s, and the headings and text are formatted by the browser. The border is too small and the content bleeds beyond it. The navigation bar is merely two tables filled with links. Almost all of the meaningful content is below the fold, and it requires far too much scrolling to view the entire page. There are large blocks of text and large blocks of pictures, especially near the bottom of the page. It would be far more effective to mix these two elements together. Some of the links direct to images with no surrounding content; why would they not be embedded? From a technical standpoint, the author uses deprecated HTML tags (i.e. ). This practice is discouraged and makes it difficult for technologies like HTML to mature.

The site is fairly functional, primarily because there is no dynamic or interesting content to load. It loads quickly, and most of the links seem to work. (The email links did not work on the computer this is being written on, but they are standard mailto links, which means if there was an email program installed on this computer they would have worked.)

The site does a good job of engaging the audience, if only because it is such an ugly site. It has two things going for it: it is uncommon for websites to be this bad in today’s web, and it is uncommon to see websites advertising for chicken saddles. These two aspects make the site reasonably interesting to read, but perhaps not for the purpose that was intended.

The links on the site seem to all be working, except for the PayPal link, which directs to a generic pop up advertisement for PayPal.

Major Writing Assignment #1 Postmortem

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This writing assignment ended up being a little bit easier than I had initially anticipated. In other classes, writing 5-7 pages in 11-point font with 1.15 spacing is quite a daunting task, but because of the structure of the paper (6 sections to discuss per assignment), I was able to write this much faster than normal. I started the assignment on Sunday by writing part of the executive summary, the interview summary, and the titles for the sections. I then wrote the analysis for each piece (one each) on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Finally, I proofread and put on some finishing touches on Wednesday and Thursday morning. This time frame was a little more spread out than other papers that I’ve done in the past, primarily due to the changing due date, which was nice. However, I wish that I had allocated more time for proofreading and revising.

The main surprising thing about doing this assignment was how quickly it went by. Like I mentioned earlier, papers of this length typically take me much longer. It was also surprising to me that all of the people who I emailed about the interview were willing to respond; I didn’t expect to have to tell people that someone else had beat them to responding. The hardest part of this essay was avoiding writing in the first person, especially in the interview summary: it is very natural to say “I interviewed [subject]”, and seemingly more awkward to say “[subject] was interview”. The easiest part, as mentioned a couple of times above, was reaching the length suggestion. This was a pleasant surprise, as I had assumed that it would be one of the harder parts.

To proofread the paper, I read over it on the computer screen, then printed it and edited it with a red pen. I like to do this for all long writing assignments, as I typically find more errors on the physical copy than I can see on a screen. I’ve even used this technique for debugging code in the past. The next time I do an assignment like this, I will be sure to leave more time for proofreading and revising. I liked writing one analysis at a time, as I didn’t experience significant writer’s block. If someone doing this assignment asked me for advice, I would tell them to split the work up between different nights. This helps by both lessening the amount of continuous time spent in front of a computer screen, as well as giving the mind a chance to take a break between writing something and revising it. I find that this break is important; when I don’t take a break, my papers tend to be more error prone.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this assignment. It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected, and it helped me learn about what I will be writing and reading in the workplace.

Interview with Cameron Buescher of Pariveda Solutions

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On 2/5/13, I conducted an interview via email with Cameron Buescher, a software engineering consultant at Pariveda Solutions on the topic of writing in the field of software engineering. Below is a transcript of the interview:

1. How much writing would you say that you do on a daily basis?

On a daily basis I write a lot of emails. That may seem mundane, but writing good ones has been one of the most useful things I’ve learned since being here. Every few weeks I’ll also do some technical documentation work.

2. What types of writing do you do for internal use? External?

Internal: I’m working on a self-evaluation right now, although I don’t know a particular stereotype that falls under.
External: Technical documentation–text, diagrams, and graphics.
Both: Email.

3. What is the process for editing/proofreading documents you produce?
Email: I proofread for several things:
– structure: did I state the most important things first, followed by supporting material in descending order of importance?
– purpose: was I clear about why I’m sending it; is it an FYI or a TODO for the recipient?
– context: did I provide enough for them to understand what I’m talking about, and did I make any assumptions about what they know?
Technical stuff: usually there is review and proofreading by peers and managers in addition to my normal mental checks.
In general:
– I try to test my writing on how it sounds out loud. If it sounds bad out loud I reword.
– I generally consider the most concise way the best, and try to cut out anything that’s irrelevant and/or “fluffy”.

4. Would you say that the majority of your writing is collaborative or individual? What kinds are collaborative, and what kinds are individual?
Some of both, although the significant pieces are almost always collaborative.

The last two questions refer to the following 6 genres of writing, as defined in Philip Rubens’ “Science and Technical Writing”:
– Marketing – provides summary and overview information aimed at persuading the audience to initiate an action (posters, online/print ads, social media, etc.)
– Conceptual – provides background and theoretical information to explain central ideas (textbooks, trade journals, etc.)
– Procedural – helps the user accomplish an immediate task, imparting short-term knowledge (cookbooks, assembly instructions, etc.)
– Tutorial – teaches a skill, imparting long-term knowledge necessary to accomplish important tasks
– Job aid – provides quick-reference information for essential tasks
– Referential – provides encyclopedic, in-depth information about a product or service

5. Which of these genres (top 3) do documents (informal or formal) that you write at work fall into? Can you describe some examples of documents you’ve written in each of the top three?
– Job aid and Referential: technical documentation for projects. These docs can cover things ranging in detail from high-level architecture to implementation-level details. These can really fall in nearly every category above, although they lean towards these categories in general. Unfortunately I don’t know of one I can send you… sorry.
– Procedural: emails. (Boring, sorry). I attached one which I recently sent asking about Dallas networking groups.

6. Which of these genres (top 3) do you most commonly read at work? Can you describe some examples of documents you’ve read in each of the top three?
– Referential: lots of technical documentation (MSDN, jQuery, [insert any framework/technology documentation]). One piece related to Windows Azure: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dd894031.aspx.
– Job aid: quick fixes to problems via internet search (Stackoverflow for something I hit today: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2239143/automapper-how-to-map-to-constructor-parameters-instead-of-property-setters )
– Conceptual: some tech, some business. Examples include http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/133738/Quick-Ways-to-Boost-Performance-and-Scalability-of and http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/lessons-in-creativity-from-pixar/