Industry presence
Using Competitive Analysis to your Advantage
In May 2025, I spoke at Write the Docs (Portland) conference, which is put on by a community-run organization for everyone who cares about communication and documentation. It was fantastic to share my experience of systematically evaluating competitors’ documentation with other writers, developers, and documentarians.
I shared my many “spreadsheets of doom” with attendees and received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback after the presentation. I truly love providing actionable, templatized information that folks can take home and immediately put into practice because that’s my favorite type of conference presentation. It’s lovely to see that it’s also appreciated by so many others!
Incorporating Tree Testing into your Content Design
Optimal Workshop, a usability testing software company, invited me to host a webinar as part of their UX Insider series in April 2025. I introduced the basics about usability testing content and how tree testing can be incredibly useful for content designers. I also walked them through how to run a tree test by hand or with usability testing software and how to interpret the results. The example I provided also showed how we incorporated tree testing results to improve our documentation at TraceLink before it was even published.
Content Experience: What is it and Why is it important?
Leading up to the 2023 MadWorld conference, MadCap Software asked me to write a blog article that defined content experience, how it’s different from content marketing and customer experience, and explained to their readers how to begin building a holistic content experience throughout their company.
Building Product IA Through Metadata-Driven Models
In March 2024, I spoke at the Information Architecture Conference, which is the leading gathering for academics and practitioners of information architecture. I presented a case study about bringing user advocacy to the product design process from the very beginning by influencing the app’s metadata model to build the product IA.
MadWorld 2023 Presentations
I gave 2 presentations at MadWorld 2023, which is one of the leading technical communications and content strategy conferences. I spoke about Applying a Design System to Your Document Design and Card Sorting or Tree Testing? Best Methods for Testing Information Architecture. Both presentations contained real examples, demos, and data to allow attendees to return to their jobs with actionable guidance.
Usability Testing for Your Products and Documentation
Instead of speaking at the rescheduled MadWorld 2022 conference, I presented a webinar aimed at encouraging technical writers to become more involved in usability testing. In addition to explaining how usability testing can be used for the documentation, I also detailed how technical writers can be invaluable to the product usability testing process and provided a blueprint for doing so.