Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
November/December 2002

Member Spotlight: Lenore Weiss

by Lenore Weiss
EBSTC Member

After my previous job developing online help for e-commerce applications at an aspiring dot-com that was going nowhere, I longed to be sacrificed to lay-offs. But the company needed its writers. I patiently waited around for a severance package until it became clear I wasn’t going to be fired. After a time, I couldn’t stand it. I quit.

First I landed a small contract job, which allowed me to collect unemployment insurance. Then I began to look around, spending mornings checking the job boards. Was I worried? No! I felt great after being emancipated from the deadline-driven life of a technical writer. However, seven months later with bills to pay, I needed to re-enter the job market. Here’s what I knew:

• I was tired of straight technical writing
• I didn’t want to commute
• I wanted new challenges

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to critique AC Transit’s newly launched Web site. AC Transit provides bus service in the East Bay to 13 cities, from Fremont in the south to San Pablo in the north, and in the unincorporated areas of western Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The Marketing and Communications Manager was impressed enough by my comments to encourage me to apply for a temporary opening that led to a full-time job. Now I’m the Web Content Manager for AC Transit’s Web site.

Information and Understanding

What do I do? I work with both the in-house user group and the developers of the site who reside in Skokie, Illinois. I’m in charge of copy for about 1,500 pages, which includes PDFs. I use a custom content management system. My responsibility includes the architecture of the site, designing the way information is displayed to the public. In this capacity, I recently worked with the Human Relations (HR) department to redesign the Career Postings area, educated by my years as a technical writer to the way internal and external clients work with information, plus my skills as a project manager.

As an example, I worked with HR to redesign their area from a linear representation of how they did business in a print environment, to a more interactive site. This included changing job listings from a scroll-down display to a tabular format and providing application forms in PDF. Applicants could either download or complete forms online. We also defined two separate HR paths—online and offline recruitment—to accommodate the realities of how the department does business. I interviewed users, did research, coordinated the work with the developers, and tested the new architecture. We launched several months ago. The new design has been a resounding success with big savings for HR. I’m now engaged in a similar process with the Purchasing Department as they move to take online bids.

My overall job is to reduce the noise in communication channels by eliminating extraneous content, simplifying formal options, and narrowing possible interpretations. Design is the intermediary between information and understanding. This is what drew me into technical writing and it’s what has helped me to metamorphose into my current position.

New Ways to Use Information Design

I recently returned from a meeting with the developers where we discussed the future direction of the Web site. Currently, our design is more representative of a “design by committee” approach. We’re looking to develop more empirical data so we can analyze the “click-throughs,” actual paths users take in moving through our site. This will give us more information about how to revamp our content. I’m using the skills of an information designer in a new way.

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