"Technical communicators must adapt
Technical communication must adapt. If technical communicators are still producing hard copy manuals and stand-alone help systems using current methods in ten years time, the profession is doomed. To adapt, technical communication must:
- move to topic-based authoring
- embrace minimalism (15 words!)
- use Web 2.0 (XML, mashups, wikis, RSS, Web services, etc)
- embrace "new media"
- adopt heavy duty "single sourcing" to improve productivity
- reduce production time (to match the shortening product life cycles and "agile" software development)
- keep abreast of the change in our readers.
More radical changes might be needed, including:
- abandoning the Table of Contents in electronic documents
- no longer including task information for software in user assistance
- using new ways of communicating concepts, such as:
- graphical devices
- movies
- audio
- animation.
Let's look at one of those radical changes: omitting task information. Dr Mike Hughes, an academic and technical communication visionary, believes that task information belongs in the user interface, not in the user assistance. If a how-to instruction has to be written, the software is flawed. Only conceptual information belongs in the user assistance, according to Hughes.
A successful new communication micro-business is Commoncraft. On a very low budget but with a high level of skill, the husband and wife team have put together clever video explanations of complex technologies. In one 3 minute and 51 second video, Commoncraft explains wikis. This is the type of conceptual information that Hughes suggests is the primary domain of technical communication. It would easy to argue that the written product of technical communicators is not nearly as effective as Commoncraft-style videos.
Collaboration is an area that we need to focus on, particularly for "new readers". People prefer to learn from peers rather than from manuals; "new readers" have lost trust in manuals, but not in their peers. Collaboration offers a way of technical communicators facilitating information, rather than creating it. This collaboration could be through wikis, mailing lists, and social networking services. We may think the lack of authority of such community-based information is a problem, but new readers see collaborative tools as legitimate, just as they see e-mail as being as legitimate as an essay."
Compare to Mike Hughes Straight Talk: Surviving Tough Times As a User Assistance Writer on UX matters.
“If a manual does not add value, the new economy will eliminate the user manual altogether and save its total cost.”
“Points of pain occur when there are any information or knowledge gaps that cause users to make mistakes or feel anxiety....Look for MooPops...Moments of opportunity. Points of pain.”
"Hard times are coming for user assistance writers, and our world will never be the same. But the challenging new economy will bring great opportunities for us to quit doing what we already know doesn’t work and focus more on writing user assistance that is useful and easy to get. Be an advocate for reducing the cost of documentation, and remember that writing less is the most effective way of reducing costs at all levels: authoring, editing, translation, production, and file maintenance. In fact, writing less user assistance can give you the opportunity to write better content that adds greater value."
