Technical Communication, MA - Content Strategist - UX Writer - User & Usability Advocate

I’m currently the Director of the Content & Research, part of the Product Design team, at Auctane, LLC. Our products include Stamps.com, ShipStation, and ShipEngine (among several others). I drive our in-product content strategy, set content guidelines and standards, and manage product research and content operations for Auctane’s suite of shipping platforms. My goal is to ensure every one of our users gets the right content, at the right time, in the right place, and for the right task.

The digital products we use to run our world should be as usable and friction-less as possible. When we build good products that give our customers the outcomes they want, we build customer loyalty.

Background…

My path to technical communication was not the usual one (if there even is such a path). After earning my BFA in Music and Sound Recording Technology, my varied interests eventually led me to a career in communication.

Over the years I gathered a wide array of professional experiences: a recording studio intern, a technical support specialist, an ESL teacher, a bartender, a film reviewer, and a bookseller. Each experience taught me valuable lessons about people, communication, and customer experience.

It was my time as a bookseller that finally put me on the path to the MATC program at Texas State University and, eventually, to writing documentation for a living.

Through my work at Auctane, I’ve honed my craft in end-user, UX, and developer documentation. I strive each day to ensure my documentation strategy works in the service of our users and synchronizes with the work done at all levels of the company.

MY Purpose

Our world is flooded with information. I strive to make meaning out of it.

My motto

I fight for the user.

View my WORK

Interests

Documentation, information design, usability, user & developer experience, user research, digital media theory, net neutrality, copyright, Creative Commons, literature (sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism) film, cats, and dance.

Organizations

• Write the Docs

• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

• Sigma Tau Delta

• Phi Kappa Phi

• Society for Technical Communication (STC)

What is Technical Communication?

You can find many definitions of Technical Communication—or TC, as some of us affectionately call it—all varied and all accurate. The simplest may be this list of attributes from The Society for Technical Communication (STC):

Communicating about technical or specialized topics, such as computer applications, medical procedures, or environmental regulations.

Communicating by using technology, such as web pages, help files, or social media sites.

Providing instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.

TC is a an interdisciplinary field, and technical communicators participate in a wide range of activities, depending on their specialty and work context. For me, this includes technical writing, information design, digital media, audience analysis, usability research, data gathering and analysis, and much more.

Underlying my praxis is a strong understanding of rhetoric and discourse, UX, cross-cultural communication, digital media theory, ethics, and documentation styles.