Human Factors in High-Tech Writing: Targeting the Right Tool for Professional Development

Practitioners, students, and instructors of business communication can benefit from learning new professional technologies; but choosing among them may be difficult. This article provides a method, based on human factors, for help-ing individuals with that choice. The first step is to complete a self-assessment questionnaire ranking preferences among forms, industries, techniques, roles, and purposes for writing. Then, individuals can match those preferences to typ-ical expectationsfor each of several new text technologies: structured on-line documentation markups, help screens and interactive tutorials, and multime-dia presentations. With that information, individuals can choose training in a technology that suits them. As COMPUTERS continue to transform the work of writers,S knowledge of new technologies can be career-boosting-for practic-ing professional writers who want to advance or to broaden their experience, for business communication students about to launch careers in a competitive market, and for those students ’ instructors, as well (Selfe, 1994). Some writers, of course, may continue to have suc-cessful careers without learning computer skills beyond word process-ing or desktop publishing. But employment advertisements for writers now often bristle with high-tech buzzwords, so that many writers may feel the pressure to acquire a &dquo;hot&dquo; new skill, recognizing that such a specialization will give candidates an edge in the current job market. However, there are now too many high-demand computer programs and other tools for any writer to have the ability, time, or training dol-lars to learn them all. Nor does it make sense to leap in and pick a technology training path at random, even from among those widely predicted to remai