Robert T. Hill, Technical Writer -- Portfolio Page

Robert T. Hill

70 La Salle St. #14C, NYC, NY 10027

(917) 605-1050 voice, robert@roberthill.org


	Note: Links to proprietary documents have been disabled to protect client confidentiality. These sites are displayed for site demonstration purposes only. Additional writing samples are available upon request.


	It is not enough to write documents. There has to be some way to distribute them to the appropriate parties for review and use. Small websites are uniquely appropriate for this purpose; I have been creating and using such tools for many years. Below are a few examples of the sites and kinds of documentation I have recently provided for clients and employers.

The Visual Computing Lab at CCNY was pioneering a Senior Capstone Course sequence with a course entitled Vision, Video, and Virtual Reality. I was enrolled in this course, and after a year of study we created a Virtual Manhattan Model. The research product that resulted from this course was accepted as an entry in the CCNY Einsteins In The City Original Research Conference in April 2005.

PeopleSoft was creating an entirely new product line for the staffing industry. They needed thorough user documentation that was both web-based and context sensitive. Because they already had a manual of style and existing design templates to be used with all PeopleSoft documentation, the job was a matter of applying existing examples to the new product.

This small intranet site was deployed over the LAN for the benefit of development team members. It provided developers and trainers with access to the documentation as soon as it was available, and it provided management with a tool to measure progress.


	The documentation part of this project lasted six months and ended exactly on schedule.


	LivePerson needed a way to demonstrate its product to prospective customers. The previous demo system was creating an unacceptable drag on the production system's performance, and the sales staff needed something that would work without regard to network connectivity, for instance at trade shows. In addition:

The demo had to be fast to download and view, universally available to all browsers, and able to be viewed online or put on a cd-rom.
It had to demonstrate the LivePerson service from the perspective of customers, clients, and administrators.
It had to simulate interactivity without allowing for any possibility of the demo moving into unexpected variations.
And, it had to be freely navigable to any page at any time, yet also have a series of Next buttons that allowed the client to simply click through the demo in a predetermined sequence.


	I satisfied all of these requirements and more by creating a set of web pages that uses pictures of the interface linked with HTML hotspots. The interface is also marked up with arrows, text, and circles to help lead clients through the demo, and there is a navigation cartouche that allows for easy navigation forward, back, and to the demo home page.

Being nothing more than simple HTML and .gif files, this demo is very fast to download and view. And, it is reliably viewed in most any browser setup.

All graphics were captured from actual screen shots and manipulated in Photoshop, creating layers of screen elements that were recombined into the final screens and exported as .gif files.

Bayer Diagnostics had launched the ADVIA120 Hematology Analyzer and was engaged in the development of post-release software updates. Because Bayer is an international pharmaceutical and medical device corporation, all their documentation has to meet ISO 9000 standards. These standards include methods for document distribution.

The intranet site I built for them allowed all development and QA people access to the historic archive of pre-release documents as well as an interface to view post-release documents as they became available.

Of course, I wrote many of the documents on this intranet site in partnership with my team members.


	In 1997, Dow Jones Markets was developing a prototype Fixed Income Transaction service that used a Java application with multi-cast data feeds. The intranet site I built for the FIT Development Team served several purposes:

It provided a slideshow of the latest screen shots for demo purposes.
It provided a set of links to various demo releases.
It provided an online portal to the full documentation set that included functional requirements, software requirements, testing documents, and server administration and cookbook documents.
It provided troubleshooting and support to help other Dow Jones people configure their computers for access to the demos.
It provided management with a means of presenting the team's ongoing efforts for high level review to assure continued funding for the project.


	Of course, I wrote most of the documents in this documentation set in collaboration with my team members. As the project was pared back, I was retained as the last remaining technical writer and so took over responsibility for all documents related to this project.