Ginny Redish

STC Toronto Spring Conference, April 2003

Janice C. ("Ginny") Redish teaches workshops on

• usability testing
• Web site design
• writing for the Web

Ginny is an independent consultant. She helps companies:

• to build usability into their processes and documentation
• with expert reviews of documentation and user interfaces

Ginny Redish at the President's Reception,
STC 2001 conference

See Ginny's books.

Ginny on Information Architecture

"For a web site to be successful, users must be able to find what they need and understand what they find in the time and effort that they are willing to spend.

"'Findability' is the first key. No matter how wonderful the content, no matter how well-written it is, if people cannot get to what they need easily, the content might as well not be there.

"Information architects are specialists in 'findability.' A web site is like a large library, and information architects can help you structure that library and develop the pathways through it so that users get quickly to the content that they need."
—from the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, http://www.aifia.org/pg/testimonials.php

About Ginny

In 1979, Ginny founded the Document Design Center at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, DC, which she directed for 13 years. There, she and her colleagues studied the problems that people have with workplace documents and helped major companies develop model print and online documentation.

In 1985, Ginny also set up one of the first independent usability test laboratories, where she and her colleagues had users come to try out interfaces and documentation for companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SAP, and Sony.

Since 1992, Ginny has been working with private companies and government agencies as a consultant in usability and documentation.

Ginny is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard.

Learn more about Ginny

• Redish and Associates, Inc. home page
• Ginny's handouts page

Ginny the STC speaker

Ginny spoke at these sessions during STC's 49th Annual Conference in 2002:

• Squishiness: Creating Effective Home Pages (PDF)
• Usability.gov: A New Resource for Web Writers and Developers"
• The Key to Successful Web Design, a panel discussion on information architecture
• From Gobbledygook to Great Documents: Three Success Stories (as moderator)

At the 48th Conference in Chicago, Ginny spoke at these sessions:

• Thinking Outside Our Own Box: Research From Other Fields and What It Might Mean For Us. (PDF)
• What Does Usability Mean? How does technical communication relates to user-centered design?
  With Caroline Jarrett, Judy Ramey, and Whitney Quesenbery. (PDF)
• Making Information Visible: Creating Effective Web Pages.
• An online magazine, Inf@Vis!, reported on Ginny's
  May 2001 talk at the STC's Annual Conference, in their article "Informing Visually."

Ginny the globe-trotter

Before Toronto, Ginny spoke at

• "When East meets West" Conference on Technical Communications and Usability, in Slovenia, October 1998: Building Usability into Your Development Process
• TransAlpine Chapter in Slovenia in October 2002
• The U.S. National Cancer Institute in Washington, D.C. on content-rich Web sites
• A joint meeting of STC Washington D.C. chapter and DC-CHI: Stucturing your Documents to Maximize Reuse (PDF)

After Toronto, Ginny will be going to

• Hot Topics in Usability conference in London, England:
  • Organising and writing content to support e-services
  • Improving the bottom line: ten keys to managing a successful e-service

More of Ginny's work

See traces of Ginny's work:

• MIT libraries' guidelines for Writing for the Web, based on a workshop of Ginny's
• CHI Position Paper on Usability Testing of Web Sites

Ginny's books

Ginny has contributed to many books and journals on both research and practice in documentation.

	A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, with Joseph Dumas. Revised edition published by Intellect, Ltd in 1999 ISBN: 1841500208
	User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, with JoAnn Hackos. Published by John Wiley Publishing, 1998 ISBN: 0471178314
	Contributor to Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel (MIT Press, 1998).

(Thanks to the STC's main Web site for the information and pictures of Ginny Redish.)