Further information on entries and winners appears in the Winter issue of Communicator of the same year. Online issues of Communicator are available to ISTC members only after logging in.
UK Technical Communication Awards
The winners were announced at the TCUK online 2021 main event on Tuesday 28 September, a virtual conference hosted by the ISTC. You can view recordings of the awards ceremony on the ISTC’s YouTube page.
Seven companies, with contributors from several countries, were recognised for the quality of their entries, six received Merit Awards and one was presented with the trophy as Overall Winner.
Overall winner
Michael Bowler (IBM)
IBM Cúram Social Program Management on Kubernetes Runbook
“The Runbook is designed for use by developers of varying levels of experience in response to issues with lack of knowledge of cloud-based technology. The system is used by IBM staff, their partners and customers worldwide.
“The judges selected this entry as the overall winner in recognition of the outstanding quality of all aspects. The appearance is attractive and consistent; navigation is well designed and implemented successfully. The text and graphics are clear, consistent and comprehensive. The code examples are presented particularly well. The videos are well paced with a good tutorial style. The team should be extremely proud of themselves for producing this entry.”
Merit Winners
Carolyn Power and Sarah Evans (Liaison Group)
TempRE Help
“This entry was produced in support of the TempRE product in use by NHS organisations in managing resourcing of temporary staff. It was set up for four different user types, in modules and using conditional text for ease of use and maintenance. A ‘find out’/’perform task’ approach is used with expanding drop downs.
“The result is a very accomplished piece. The authors have taken great care to ensure the content and structure suit the intended users. The entry has a good look and feel with good use of plain language; logical structure; it is easy to navigate with a comprehensive search. The entry is particularly impressive for such a small team.”
Oshadee Amarakoon, Mohamed Amjad Hassen, Iresha Nilumin Hewavasam, Olivier Becq (Kosan Crisplant Lanka (Pvt) Ltd)
MAKEEN User Guide (Kosan)
“The objective was to provide a quick introduction to the MAKEEN Gateway user interface. The emphasis was on ‘quick’ with a small team in a short timescale. The resultant user guide is a highlighted dashboard providing details of features, definitions of terminology, overview of data, security architecture, general settings and keyboard shortcuts.
“In the submission the entrant declared that a ‘plain, concise and active writing style was adopted for effortless reading’. The judges compliment them on succeeding in providing a well structured guide suitable for their target audience, customers’ technical staff already trained to use the gateway. The guide is very well designed and implemented.”
Karina Lehrner-Mayer (ISIS Papyrus Europe AG)
Papyrus Correspondence Business Designer Workshop Course Guide
“This entry consists of the full documentation set provided as complete training material for a five-day course for the Papyrus Business Correspondence Designer Workshop. The content is suitable for those with domain-specific experience, but no IT knowledge. There is also scope for usage by those new to the product. The course is available in English and German.
“This is a very accomplished piece of work. Challenges here are for consistency of style and content across the set of manuals. Also a sound structure is required for ready reference. This is evident in the consistency achieved. The code examples are particularly well presented. The user can be confident of finding the relevant information readily.”
Gary Appleton (Aptean Limited)
Aptean Proof of Delivery Online Help
“The scope of this entry is ambitious. There are three user guides for the different user types: administrators, planners and drivers. There is also an interactive element for drivers using mobile devices. One challenge stated was the need to engage with users ranging from school leavers to advanced users in different sections.
“The content and layout are eminently suitable in all cases; the material is well presented and use of language is very effective. For the interactive elements, the step-by-step instructions are particularly well executed. The entry deserves to achieve the stated aim of increasing user confidence in the documentation as well as the software.”
Paul Ballard (3di and Unzer)
Unzer API Documentation Portal
“The challenges in this Unzer/3di collaboration were to keep the API documentation up to date with auto-updating and in line with best practice, in step with the product development lifecycle and incorporating features of a company rebrand. There is also a longer term objective for Unzer staff to maintain their own documentation.
“The entry has a very clean and clear appearance. The user can navigate readily with assurance. This is a quality product; the result very engaging with consistent use of language and styles promoting confidence in the validity of information provided.
“This is a good quality entry. It is clear from the entry form that a lot of work went into this portal. Various types of software have been used to produce this entry yet the final result is seamless. It is a good quality product.”
Paul Ballard (3di and IndigoVision)
IndigoVision Agora Documentation
“The documents submitted were part of much larger project for 3di to bring Agora’s documentation to a better standard and to rebrand following acquisition by IndigoVision. This entailed a significant uplift for documentation required for an audience of customers, partners as well as internal testing and support staff. The documents submitted (an installation and maintenance guide and a ‘how to’ document).
“This is a high quality entry. It is great to see the end result of collaboration between companies. All involved should be proud of what they have achieved.
“A reported outcome of the 3di/IndigoVision collaboration is high quality documentation as standard. The quality is consistently good and promotes confidence in the content.”
Communicator Awards
The UK Technical Communication awards have a category for the ISTC Communicator Journal Article of the Year Award and Column of the Year Award, published between Autumn 2020 and Summer 2021. We asked our readers to vote on their favourite three articles and on their regular column of choice.
More details of the readers’ voting choices together with general comments on reading preferences were published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Communicator. ISTC Members can access back copies of Communicator on the ISTC website.
Article of the Year
Virginia Soares
‘A strong web presence’ (Summer 2021)
Tips for search engine optimisation: giving tips for making your content achieve rich results with search engine optimisation.
Column of the Year
Warren Singer
Ethical dilemmas
‘Working from home during lockdown’ (Autumn 2020) was identified as the favourite instance.