Technical Writer
Education Networks of America
March 2001 to February 2003
Education Networks of America (ENA) built and manages the network infrastructure providing internet access and services to all public K-12 schools throughout Tennessee. ENA's Tennessee network currently serves 250,000 computers in 1,900 locations, reaching more than one million students and 60,000 teachers.
At ENA, I produced online help and print documentation for applications supporting network services. Some of the applications I documented included:
- an educational content portal inserted into web browsers
- an IP address allocation management tool
- a content filtering system
- a customized installation of the Remedy Action Request System
- an emergency alert management system
In addition to my technical writing duties, I wrote copy for and designed marketing documents for all of the company's products. I also was a key member of the team that produced the 186-page RFP response that won a $106 million contract.
As a participant in the software development lifecycle, I recognized that our lack of a defined interface design process reduced the usability of our products and muddied the development process. I researched different approaches to interface design and made a proposal to improve our design process by implementing Lucy Lockwood and Larry Constantine's Usage-Centered Design (UCD) Process. The basic steps in UCD include:
- task analysis
- paper prototype development
- usability testing
- paper prototype revision
- more usability testing
- functional specification documentation
The Usage-Centered Design process became a logical transition from requirements definition to code development. The developers involved with the UCD projects appreciated that they knew exactly what needed to be built before they started coding.
For more information, see my portfolio samples in interface design.