What I learned from my pattern recognition talk at STC12

My session on pattern recognition for technical communicators was a very rewarding experience which taught me a lot. I thank Paul Mueller, Conference Manager, and Alyssa Fox, Program Committee Chair, for inviting me to speak, even though this was my first summit. Their friendly, indefatigable support set the tone for a high-energy, well-run conference. If you [...]

Find out how users use your documentation

Asking good questions of your users is essential to know how your customers use your documentation. This is part 2 after my post about using a survey to get to know your audience. The introductory paragraphs are identical to last week’s post, so feel free to skip ahead to the two paragraphs before the next [...]

A user survey helps you to know your audience

Asking good questions of your users is essential to know the audience of your documentation. A recent thread at Technical Writing World got me thinking about user surveys and revisiting two posts from 2010 where I wrote about obvious, but not so helpful questions and how to segment users and survey your documentation. You can [...]

Tech comm meets content strategy, with Ray Gallon

Technical communications and content strategy have a lot to say to each other.  Bloggers have frequently related the two disciplines. Tech comm conferences run streams on content strategy, for example, tekom11 dedicated a whole day to the topic. Content strategy for software development Leave it to Scriptorium and their excellent webinars to shed some light [...]

Join us for pattern recognition at TCUK

Dr. Chris Atherton and I will be premiering our exciting interdisciplinary presentation on “Pattern recognition for technical communicators” at the TCUK conference near Oxford next week. You can find the session abstract on the conference web site or review my previous post. Join us for a fun whirlwind tour through human perception and find out [...]

Framing tech comm: O’Reilly vs. Dangerfield

Technical communication is perceived in many different ways, some more constructive than others. Luckily, the framing of tech comm is the result of a dialogue/feedback loop, so we can help to shape how we come across. Tim O’Reilly on the future Consider Tim O’Reilly, quite a visionary technical communicator. He works to create “The Missing [...]

Keeping your documentation stakeholders happy

Don’t forget your stakeholders and their practices as you improve and change documentation. – That was the humbling lesson I learned (once again) as I presented our revamped documentation to non-tech comm colleagues. Reporting on progress The company I work for currently moves its documentation towards more structured writing and topic-based authoring. We’ve already rolled [...]

When redundancy is good: Online help navigation

Redundant navigation can help users find what they’re looking for. Redundancy in documentation is usually bad: When you have the same content (in different words) in two places, you pay twice for localization – yet you probably only remember to update one of the items. So you risk inconsistencies, extra costs and general havoc. Not [...]

How (not) to use documentation checklists

Checklists can be great aids, but they won’t guarantee that you create good and complete documentation. – That’s my experience, and I’d appreciate your input whether you agree or not. The Valuable Content Checklist Content strategist Ahava Leibtag published the “essential Creating Valuable Content Checklist (TM)” last month, along with a step-by-step guide: With this [...]

How efficient is your documentation?

To gauge the efficiency of your documentation, consider the time spent to create it plus the time it takes to use it. That’s the lesson I learned from applying Scott Berkun’s make vs. consume ratio to documentation. Scott’s idea is generally that it takes time A to create a tweet or a poem, a book [...]