Putting the User First

by Karen Rokich

A writer's path to technical communication is not always a straight line. Nancy Dodsworth followed a circuitous route that started at Northeastern University, a five-year co-op school in Boston. As she was putting herself through college, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Group and Public Communications, her challenge was to find a co-op job that paid well. At the time, most of the better paying jobs were computer related. Her first technical writing assignment came in the form of a co-op job at Zayre Corporation in Framingham, Massachusetts. She was hired, along with another student, to document the NCR cash register system used in their stores. They documented it by hand and then handed over the written notes to a Data Entry group to put online. That was quite an old process, but it seemed to work back then.

Having found her profession, Nancy also found purpose and motivation. Her goal is to produce documentation that provides clear, concise, easy-to-follow directions for the end user. Because she puts herself in a user's shoes as often as possible, she knows how frustratrating it is to read poorly written materials that are hard to understand. Her job is to make the user's job easier by communicating in a way that is easy to understand and gets to the point as quickly as possible.

Nancy is currently the Security & Risk Awareness Program Manager for Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati. She is responsible for managing the bank's Security and Risk Awareness program. This includes:

• Developing Web-based security & risk awareness courses for employees
• Developing security and fraud-related communications for internal publications
• Developing incident related communications as needed
• Developing and maintaining internal web sites
• Participating in and organizing security & risk awareness events for employees and customers