Graphics Hurdles

Good evening, everybody!
Now that we have our first draft, we are moving forward to some important due dates that the group established; our Irish project manager, Aine Hogan, made a very reasonable schedule for everyone to follow. Each person still has an assigned role, though we have had some crossing over among individual roles. Michael and Tom have done some additional editing to our draft, as our writers Eveline and Siobhan continue to provide insightful suggestions. In addition, Guillaume from Paris has given me Google forms french screen shots to prepare the document for translation while I work on graphics this week. I will admit, having little experience in creating graphics for technical documents, I am nervous to undertake this role. I am well-versed in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but it is certainly different when you are preparing images with technical communication and international audiences in mind. I am referring back to old textbooks like Redish’s Letting Go of the Words about online Help, our own Hofstede’s Software of the Mind, and Markel’s Technical Communication to remind me of key factors in page layout and image choice. I think as long as I maintain simple patterns and keep the reader focused on the instruction, our team members will consider the document ready for translation after I finish. Following Markel’s words in particular, I am aiming for a “less is more” approach; color choices should be conservative and reflective of colors found on google forms, and graphics should not draw the eye away from the wording itself.

Since the draft has been made earlier this week, there has been a lot of involvement on Slack, and I believe many of our team members (including myself) are struggling to read every message that comes about. Eveline has suggested earlier today that we should work on our roles in the document as independently as possible, then merge our ideas together once they are complete, rather than bounce every suggestion off in our Slack chat rooms. It is a very interesting dynamic, especially as many of our Irish team members are at different stages in their life (i.e. kids, full time career jobs) and we have had little communication with our Parisian counterparts. However, as the due date gets closer, the translators will step in and prepare our French document. I do hope we stay on this studious path, and that my partner Luke and I can still successfully balance our other classes on top of this international collaboration.