Tuesday

Write New Feature Content

Yesterday, I met with Bilal to find out more about the customers who will use the pane wallpaper feature. Also, I browsed the forums to see what some of our customers have had questions about in the past. Today, I write the initial content for the pane wallpaper feature. I add step-by-step information on how to use the feature, and I add reference information for more advanced users. To get ideas for the initial content, I read the feature specification. When engineers at NI develop a new feature, they write a feature specification. In the feature specification for pane wallpaper, the engineer describes what pane wallpaper is and explains how this feature helps users. From the feature specification, I have the main points to start an outline of my content. I know that I need some screenshots for the step-by-step information, so I set up a meeting with Document Production (Doc Pro) for their help with these components. After I create the initial content, I show it to the engineer. He gives me some edits, which I will review with Robin tomorrow.

Attend Document Production Training

The opportunity for on-the-job training was a high priority for me as I searched for technical writing jobs. At NI, I realize that I have many different training options and will continue to have different options as my career here progresses. For example, in the few short months I've been here, I've taken a week-long course on the product I document, and I've received informal training from other writers in my group on how to work with the tools we use to create documentation. Today, I have training with Doc Pro. Doc Pro provides services for formatting and publishing product documents, course manuals, seminar manuals, and a variety of other NI documents. Veronica gives me an overview of the Art standards that NI follows so that I'll be able to take screenshots and work with other art correctly. During the training, I receive a handout with basic art guidelines, then Veronica shows me some tips in the software we use for working with screenshots. Besides working with technical art, Doc Pro also creates and maintains the templates we use for the printed documentation we create. Using these templates ensures our work is consistently the same across product lines, which helps customers who use multiple NI products.