Technical communicators: how do you contribute to the design of a user interface?

The design of the user interface is usually left to programmers. This, from the users´ perspective, does not always result in the best and most appropriate design. in an ideal world all systems would have the user interface designed by those professionally trained to do such work. However, we are not in an ideal world. Who else therefore has the experience and skill to contribute to the design ofthe user interface? Does the technical communicator have a role to play? Recent Australian research suggests that technical communicators are contributing more to user interface design than is generally recognized. The discussion for this paper will explore how technical communicators can contribute to this aspect of systems and what your contribution is.