A Bi-Monthly Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2003
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Table of Contents>Senior Member Spotlight: Dick Miller
Senior Member Spotlight:
Dick Miller
By Rachel Houghton
Meet Dick Miller, Senior Member.
Dick Miller encountered his first technical communications job while working as a teacher of physics and general sciences in the New York City public schools. As a teacher, he developed and taught from printed instructional materials for courses in Physics, Electronics, Environmental Sciences and People-Technology-Society Interactions.
After 11 years as a public school teacher, Dick started working for Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles as a Training Engineer. His original duties included designing and developing self-paced learning modules. By the time Dick left Hughes to do some consulting work, he had been a team leader, a contract administrator for a $2.5 million training development contract, Business Manager of the Training Department, and Manager of the Information Systems training organization.
Dick’s career has included both staff and consulting positions at several local area companies, including Hewlett Packard, Mentor Graphics, and Tektronix. Currently, he is consulting on some e-learning and usability projects and teaching a class in IT Project Management for Concordia University’s School of Management.
Dick is actively involved with the STC’s Usability Special Interest Group (SIG) at the national level, serving as the Newsletter Editor and Assistant Manager. Recently, Dick has become more active in our local chapter as a member of the Senior Member Advisory Panel, which focuses on the needs of senior members.
Dick credits the Usability SIG for influencing his recent career path. As a result of his participation, he has developed an interest in and an expertise with usability issues. He was able to introduce usability considerations into the development of custom software applications at Hewlett Packard’s Vancouver site, to the point where he was known as “the usability guy”. As the editor of the Usability Interface, the quarterly journal of the Usability SIG, Dick received an award for Distinguished Technical Communication in the International Competition.
Rachel Houghton is a lone writer at Cypress Semiconductor in Beaverton, OR, with a focus in Framemaker, Acrobat and Windows online help. She can be reached at stc@rhoughton.com.
