The Not-Boring Tech Writer

As the tech comm industry develops, technical writers must embrace a sobering truth: As Dr. Stan Dicks writes in Digital Literacy for Technical Communication , “Technical communicators who add value to their organizations do not merely write and edit documents.” So how do we prepare for the future of tech comm so we can ensure we’re adding value to our organizations? Preparing for the future is di...

Documentation and Support teams share a common goal: to give customers the information they need to get the greatest value from a product. But despite a shared goal, consistent communication rarely follows. The result: tech writers missing out on content-rich customer feedback, thus, as our guest Neal Kaplan phrases it, “creating documentation in a vacuum.” In this episode, you’ll learn how to bri...

We’ve all experienced the joy of community: colleagues mentor you; friends encourage you; strangers point you towards their favorite pizza shop downtown. For that moment, whether you had previous ties to each other or not, you feel that sense of community. And while every community is unique, one concept is constant: As urbanist Charles Montgomery defines it, “people gathering, talking, and helpin...

Where should user experience (UX) design fit in the technical writer’s toolbox? Well, think about how your users experience your documentation: Are they following a workflow path, following a series of pages to complete a series of tasks sequentially? Are they following nav links, jumping around to find task-specific information? Understanding how your users experience your documentation is unders...

Face it: sometimes, documenting software can be tricky. Not because we don’t understand the software – we get that. Nor because we can’t articulate it in layman’s terms – we’ve got that covered, too. But because feature guides – the traditional style of software documentation – isn’t enough to ensure your end users can find the information they need to accomplish a specific task. Enter just-in-tim...

What’s the ultimate stereotype of technical writers? Easy: that once you begin your career as a technical writer, you’re caught in a documentation vortex. And worse – that there’s no way out. But just like all stereotypes, they’re meant to be broken. As communication experts, our skills – analyzing an audience; writing crisp, clear, concise copy – surpass documentation into an industry many techni...

Once you’ve found your end-user, think about how you find his or her truest needs for the product or service. For many technical writers, it looks something like this: compile a series of  fairly generic questions – “how old are you?”, “how familiar are you with the technology?” – and hope their responses unveil their needs. Sometimes it works; but other times, you’re left asking yourself, “What d...