Re: 10 Things All Technical Writers Should Do
Andrew Plato wrote:
<snip>
5. Answer the 5 Golden Questions:
1. What is it?
2. What does it do?
3. What is its purpose?
4. How does it work (or how does it do what it is supposed to do)?
5. Why is it relevant?
These questions are system-centric, not user-centric. Try these instead:
1. Who will use this product?
2. What are their goals?
3. How will the product help them reach their goals?
4. When they are having trouble reaching their goals, how can I design information so they can most quickly and easily get the information they need to continue?
5. What will make users happy?
It's the difference between being user-focused and engineering-focused.
If you don't know the answers to Andrew's "engineering-focused" questions, how can you be sure you have enough technical knowledge to use as a foundation to answer your "user-focused" ones?
It's one thing to know all about your users and their goals--which I agree is essential--and yet another to have the depth of understanding of the technology behind the application to choose the information, including conceptual or contextual background, that will help your users accomplish their tasks. Many times I've gone to an application's help, not to ask "how do I do this?" but to ask "what the heck *is* this?" so that I can figure out how it fits into the application so I can decide whether I need to use it to do what I need.
A large part of the writing I've done at my last several jobs, and especially at my current one, includes introducing and explaining new concepts on which the software is based. Without knowing at least something about those concepts, users (in this case, software developers) will not be able to use the application successfully.
martha
--
Martha Jane {Kolman | Davidson}
Dances With Words
editrix -at- nemasys -dot- com
"Too many words bring about exhaustion."
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 5 (translated by Sheets/Tovey)
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