What is UI Text? Why Should I Care? and What Can I Do to Improve It?

A panel discussion led by several Microsoft Editors and Writers who will talk about UI text, why UI text is so important, and the challenges in working in the various business groups and technologies.

UI Text is:

·         The dialog boxes, property sheets, Control Panel items, toolbars, ribbons, command buttons, title bars, menus, labels, drop-down lists in the programs you use every day

·         Those annoying messages (Examples: error and event messages, warnings, confirmations, notifications, status messages)

·         Those frustrating progress bars, tooltips, field validation text, links

·         And for the geeks, command line text

UI Text Means Paying Attention to

•       Audience

•       Style and Tone

•       Terminology

•       Localization and Globalization

•       Geopolitical concerns

About the Presenters

Panel moderator Theresa Haynie has been a technical editor at Microsoft for the past three and a half years, following a long career in IT and telecommunications. She is currently a managing editor in Servers and Tools Business, supporting Windows Server management software. In 2011, she worked with Lindsay Pyfer and James Dunn to create a cross-company UI Text video training series to help drive a more consistent approach to UI text development.

Lindsay Pyfer is a senior technical editor at Microsoft. She's worked on Exchange content for the administrator and end-user audiences for the past 12-1/2 years. Since 2005, her primary focus has been UI text for Outlook Web App. Before being hired at Microsoft, she worked as a paralegal and in publishing.

Saska Albright wrote such diverse technical “stuff” as dial-up Internet setup disks for first-time computer owners, sales engineer training manuals for Cisco Systems, nuclear safety inspection contracts, UNIX command-line documentation for accountants, and product help and UI text for Windows. Today Saska is a Program Manager at Microsoft, where she supports internal content publishing, UI text editing, and localization software.

Kathy Osborne is a senior writer at Microsoft, focusing on consumer products. She has written and managed writing for the Encarta product family, Flight Simulator, Train Simulator, and a variety of the first wave of Xbox games, and now works in the Health Solutions Group. She currently manages end-user, developer, and platform writing for HealthVault, a Web-based service for organizing and managing health information. Before joining Microsoft 12 years ago, Kathy cut her teeth in technical writing at ACI US and Claris, served a year as president of the 1500-member Silicon Valley Chapter of the STC, and was a member of the Technical Communications Advisory Board of De Anza Community College. Kathy graduated from Dartmouth an increasingly long time ago.