Carol Szatkowski
Carol founded Clear Point Consultants in 1989 as a niche agency specializing in technical communications. As the market evolved, Carol observed companies beginning to shift their attention to designing better products rather than explaining bad designs through documentation. Clear Point refocused on the fast-growing user experience (UX) field, and within a few years grew from a regional staffing provider of UX professionals to one with national recognition.
Carol is a practicing yogi and an avid outdoorswoman who is happiest hiking in the woods, swimming in the ocean, and listening to nature.
Peter Morville’s Seven Facets of User Experience for Websites
When information architect and author, Peter Morville broadened his interest from IA to UX, he found the need for a new diagram to illustrate the facets of user experience – especially to help clients understand why they had to move beyond usability. The following is what he developed: Useful. As practitioners, we can’t be … Continue reading
User Satisfaction Is Key To A Great User Experience
User satisfaction is the key to a great user experience. If people are happy using your website, they will return to use it again. Any returning or potential customer does not want to feel cheated. They want to feel valued, like your website was designed just for them! (which it should be) Here is a … Continue reading
What to consider when creating user experience
User-experience is not about the ability to use a product – it is about the feelings one has while using the product. The aim of user-experience is to create happiness or likeability. You want people to feel comfortable and happy during all phases of having used your product. While creating the best user experience one … Continue reading
Understanding Usability
Usability measures the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a product or a system including websites, mobile technology, software application or any user-operated device. According to an article in Information Today, Andrew Dillon, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas, says he tends to “accept … Continue reading
The Experts on User Experience
Want to know what the experts are saying about user experience? We did too and is this what we found! “Showing personality in your app, website, or brand can be a very powerful way for your audience to identify and empathize with you. People want to connect with real people and too often we forget … Continue reading
Nuance Communications: A case study on the evolution of documentation
Last Tuesday a group of approximately 25 technical writers gathered at Nuance Communications to hear Documentation Manager Peter Crimmin speak about the evolution of documentation at Nuance. Peter described the familiar challenge documentation departments are faced with when multiple companies are acquired and documentation needs to merge. The main themes Peter talked about were: -Documentation … Continue reading
Supporting Multiple Scrum Teams as a Single Technical Writer in an Agile Environment
Last Thursday’s Clear Point coffee was hosted by Courion Corporation in Westboro. Lynne Swenson, Technical Publishing Manager and solo technical writer gave a presentation based on her experience as the only writer supporting all Courion development teams. Wikipedia defines agile software development as a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, … Continue reading
Technical Writers Webinar: Structured Documentation Primer July 20th
I have received a number of inquiries as to where to take a class on structured authoring.Neil Perlin, one of our local thought leaders and trainers in the industry has agreed to offer a half day Webinar to address this need.Neil has been providing online documentation training and consulting services for 15 years, is a … Continue reading
Documentation and UX: Partnering for Success
Attendees at our Clear Point Coffee on June 10 viewed a compelling slide show on the new direction for documentation managers. Doug Gibson, Senior Manager of the User Interface Design team at Symantec, had both good news and bad news to report, but our audience was already well aware of the biggest challenge – … Continue reading
Multiple contract elearning jobs open now!
Contract elearning jobs open now! We have a client that has priority deliverables within the next 1 to 6 months. Work is mostly on site in Boston. Rate will depend on experience and specific job. Feel free to pass this on. Contact: Marlene Favaloro Marlene@clearpnt.com Contract 1: Instructional Designer/Course Developer needed for large high tech … Continue reading