Notes from IEEE IPCC99 Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana, September 7-10, 1999

Keynote Address: Looking at Communications from Ease of Use

Tony Temple
IBM Corporation

Temple is an IBM vice president for "Ease of Use," and as such he is influencing the next revolution in personal computing. He is also the recipient of many IBM awards for innovation and technical achievement. He became a member of the IBM Academy of Technology in 1989 and was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1993--one of 40 in the world.

Session Description: Temple provided an insightful, engaging, and highly informative presentation on what he envisions to be the future of personal computing over the next decade. He sees the Internet continuing to pervade both commercial and personal communication, and he predicts an accelerating convergence of platforms, including miniaturization and "Buck Rogers" type manifestations such as head-mounted PC displays that will enable enterprising teen-agers to rollerblade and watch MTV at the same time. We can hardly wait.

• Users want to use the technology without understanding the complexity that underlies it. The technical communicator has to make that possible by combining depth of technical knowledge with simplicity of expression.
• The Internet is linking every computer on the planet...totally changing the face of business and interpersonal communication.
• Users have access to unfathomable amounts of data from all over the world.
• Increasingly, users have personal and embedded devices that allow pervasive computing...phones, laptops, palm-held computers, television/computer combinations...it's all coming together. We will be able to conduct the same task (e.g., book a flight) irrespective of the platform.
• There is an infinite variety of user experiences to suit user tasks, ranging from embedded (multiple microchips in cars), to custom (task-specific), to general purpose.
• New technology will change user interaction: trackpoint, scrollpoint, "one touch," ViaVoice, crosspad, eye tracking, gesture, wearable PCs, microdrives, high-res LCDs, and head-mounted devices.
• Handwriting is a tougher input path for computers to interpret than speech; there are more variations and difficulties on legibility than there are in vocal patterns.
• Eyetracking provides a good usability test of Web pages and online documentation...it reveals what elements are capturing and holding attention.
• Present PC systems are pretty much "dumb" but they will become intelligent, with much more interaction with users.
• Head-mounted displays will put the equivalent of a 20-inch screen display right below the eyes... kids will be able to watch movies and roller-blade at the same time (shudder!)
• People expect things to work out of the box: switch on a TV and watch it, buy a phone and make calls, get in a car and drive it. Similarly, people expect to buy a computer system and be surfing the Net within 10 minutes of opening the box.
• Products must be self-describing and self-usable. There is growing reluctance to consult documentation. This is a major challenge for technical communicators.
• Different users have different world views: e.g., techno-phobe, techno-phile, techno-follower.
• The new cyber-facing access to an enterprise: a Web site has become de rigueur for companies of all sizes. No longer is the sole territory of information technology specialists (the "tecchies"); it is now part of the basic toolkit of all communicators.
• In many cases, a company's information site is decoupled from its Web-based ordering system. To be effective in e-commerce, the two need to be integrated. The "facade" needs to be integral with the back-end computer engines that conduct the business.
• The Web is moving to a publishing model. The best approach is to have those who create the information generate the database, but have communication specialist put the front-end "gloss" on it...HTML formatting can be automated, which allows continuous maintenance without constantly rebuilding Web pages from scratch.
• Operational data will underpin the Web. For example, if engineers change the specs, the changes must "ripple" automatically through the database and the output chain to update all user documentation. The linchpin of this is XML.
• The key is to integrate everything the user sees and touches into a total user experience: do business, buy, implement, use, manage.
• To accomplish this, product development must reflect one design from a multidisciplinary team (engineers, programmers, technical communicators, translators for the global marketplace), involving users from the start of the project and using well-defined and understood processes.
• The "one-stop shop" for the total user experience: www.ibm/com/Easy.
• At IBM, there is one database: content is separate from presentation. Thus, the Intranet shows more to IBM employers than the Extranet shows to the outside world...but both the Intranet and the Extranet draw from the same database.
• Rapid change creates great opportunity: everything is wide open...technical communicators can help shape the future.