RE: user advocate- A technique to get on development's good side

Subject: RE: user advocate- A technique to get on development's good side
From: "Kathleen" <keamac -at- cox -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 11:04:34 -0700


This discussion has brought out a lot of interesting points and
suggestions about working with SME's and some of the obstacles that tech
writers can face. Re the notion that "everyone in a company is a user
(customer) advocate" I'd like to add my 2 cents:

I think the buck really does stop with the writer so far as
documentation being complete and understandable, because writing
documentation for the user is a special "mental space" that is different
from development or documenting the software. I'm not saying that
engineers/developers can't be trained in writing user materials or good
at setting things up so they are well-organized and "usable," but their
cognitive perspective is directed at a different level than explaining
things to a non-technical user.

For example, as the tech writer I'm given new software to document with
preliminary info on what it is for and how to start it. While working
through the software, I will have questions about how to do things, and
new questions will arise when I start writing. Many of those questions
are unlikely to occur to the engineer or developer, because the
information has already been embedded in their mental schema about the
product, so it just doesn't occur to them that it should be made
explicit-it's presupposed in their perspective.

A couple of cases from my last job can highlight what I mean and give
more perspective. Many of the older documents at the company did not
explain how to start or stop the software, or uninstall equipment, and
when writing manuals I always had to review procedures at the end to
make sure that these items were included, as well as safety
considerations in those situations. Sometimes there were two sets of
software that could be used for similar activities, and I had to be sure
that these instances were considered and noted where either was
applicable. Note that the stakeholders (marketing, development, etc.)
were very thorough in considering most of these items during the
development phase. But as the writer, I was the one who was dealing with
the big picture, and even I could lose sight of the various interactions
and implications when I was writing and explaining materials-I had to
periodically back up and take a different perspective to be sure that
the materials were complete and understandable.

Bottom line (to me): The tech writer is the person who explains both the
nuts-and-bolts and the big picture, and it's rare that anyone else does
that. When the tw fails in that job, there are lots of calls to customer
service. I think the person writing the user manuals can increase
product reliability and customer satisfaction by making sure that the
customer has the appropriate information, including trouble-shooting,
problems, etc.

Kathleen




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