Shiney Philip is currently working as a Senior Technical Writer in Siemens Information System Ltd. in the Soarian MedSuite Documentation team. She successfully completed the TWB Fundamental Certification Program in June 2007. After completing her graduation in M.Sc (Biotechnology) she worked as a Copy Editor at Macmillan. Read on to know more about Shiney.
What are the routine tasks performed by you as a Technical Writer?
- Documenting different product deliverables
- Working on Newsletter and marketing documents
- Communicating with different stakeholders and understanding the requirements
- Giving product demos
Can you differentiate between Instructional Design and Information Design?
Instructional design: Document designed in such a way that instructs the user to learn something. WBT’s and certification courses follow instructional design.
Information design: Documents designed to give the right information about something (eg. Information to install a product) keeping the end-user of the document in mind.
What are Macros?
A useful feature from Microsoft that allows performing a same task many number of times automatically. This saves a lot of time and is surely bliss for a technical writer.
Do you follow any Style Guide? If so which?
Yes, I follow the Siemens Style Guide.
How do you find the usability of style guide easy for documentation purposes?
It is the second Bible. It helps a lot to clarify many doubts when I get stuck somewhere while writing.
What are challenging tasks according to you?
To frame the right question and ask the technical people for the answer that I as a technical writer is looking for, is a challenge.
Have you created any Online Help?
Yes, for a healthcare product.
Do you use any of the graphic tools in your company? If yes, name it?
Yes, I use the SnagIt as the graphic tool in my company.
Do you think Technical Writers play an important role in bridging the gap between technology and usability?
Yes, technical writers provide the right technical information through their varied documents to the end-users and hence bridge the gap between technology and usability
What are the other communication platforms that you have worked on?
- Epic Editor
- RoboHelp X5
- MS Office
1 response so far ↓
1 Uma // Jun 21, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Hello Shiney,
I am currently pursuing my FCP and have completed my post graduation in Microbiology.How different is technical writing from life sciences..Would be glad if you could share your experience as a technical writer being a life sciences graduate.
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