Conveying Data

[jaced]

I think it is interesting to see that almost everyone else in my group conveys data differently than I do.

The evidence is almost immediately apparent upon opening an email, test report, or spreadsheet I have done ... versus what anyone else has done. In my opinion, theirs is very raw, whereas mine attempts to convey high-level information at a

Comments

[jcbarker]

I totally agree with your points about well done presentation enabling information transfer. Unfortunately, in my brief career thus far, most technical professionals don't consider their audience much, or at all, and tend to produce things closer to raw data dumps than something easily comprehensible.

Don't suppose you took a few extra technical communication courses beyond TC 231?

[jaced]

Nope. Didnt even take TC231

[htang]

I definitely appreciate a well-formated email or spreadsheet when I can open it. And in a homogeneous environment like Microsoft's, there's no technical reason why people shouldn't go the extra mile to make sure their documents are accessible. However, there are still a lot of people out there with non-Windows or non-MS-office setups (or old versions of Windows or MS office). In situations with heterogeneous computing platforms, simpler does make a difference -- if your audience can't read the document, fancy formatting has the nonsensical result of decreasing readability!

PS -- I don't know how widely your documents are shared, but if you have a reasonably wide audience you might want to look at color schemes which are friendly to the color-blind.

[jaced]

Agreed on heterogeny.

My documents tend to be shared at weird levels. A lot of the time, I thinking - hey this is just for my boss and I ... which later turns into my boss^4, maybe some outside teams, etc. Basically, we have our grubby little hands in everyone's cookie jar.

Im would totally make color-blind friendly documents if I knew anything about it (other than there are a few different types) ... and that the extra time was going to pay off. The way I see it - which may be fairly selfish - is that it is the colorblind persons own responsibility to alert me to their presence, instead of me spending extra (and possibly wasted) time under the assumption that it might one day be an issue.