top of page
Search

Visualising the work of a technical communicator

Users are assisted to get the best from software updated with push notifications directly to their phones. Picture collage by John Mugumya

This week, I dedicated time to completing two related assignments. The first was a topic audit and the second was topic creation.

For the topic audit, the requirement was simple. We were required to identify any user assistance topic published online and identify characteristics that Mark Baker (2013) highlighted in his book Every Page is Page One (EPPO). The second assignment required us to write a topic that conforms to the same characteristics.

  1. Topic audit

Working on this assignment helped me start noticing things that are very evident in online topics but which I had never paid attention to. Recently I wanted to reset my phone to factory settings and naturally went online and accomplished the task with ease. Having done the topic audit, I now appreciate why some online instructions are so easy to carry out. There is an art to writing good instructions after all.

  1. Topic creation

This was the harder of the two assignments. We selected the topics ourselves from a list provided by the lecturer and I have mused over the topic for several weeks. I thought it was going to be easy until I started writing. We were limited to 700 words and by the time I was done with the first draft, I was close to 2000 words.

I immediately knew something was wrong. I recalled Mark Baker’s advice. Start afresh. And so, I did and again went through numerous versions and rewrites. This assignment teaches conciseness, unlike any other writing assignment I have done on this program. You must be specific and effective with your words.

  1. Learning from practitioners

This week we got a flavour of what the real work of a technical communicator feels like. We listened to those in the practice first-hand. After learning a lot of theory and abstract concepts, listening to someone on the job you are training to do helps you visualise your future role in a more practical way.

One lady said one of her roles is writing software release notes.

Now, in the past, when you bought some software, it would arrive on a CD, and in the pack, you’d find a booklet with the release notes.

I do not recall ever reading those notebooks cover to cover. They were either in small fonts and unreadable or too complicated to understand. Books are also very problematic to search. I would keep them in a drawer and completely forget about them. If issues arose with the software and I needed to troubleshoot, I’d talk to a colleague or ask someone from IT. I think only IT workers read those notebooks.

These days, I don’t think a lot of software still ships on CDs, and the release notes aren’t printed out but are published online instead. And we read these notes by the way only that we might not be aware of that. We read them in small chunks called topics. Especially when our gadgets misbehave, and we need to troubleshoot. Or when there is a software update, and we want to know how to use a new feature that has been added.

And some bits of the release notes are pushed directly to our phones. (see picture below)

Instead of booklets, software release notes are topic based and availed to users as tips directly on their phones. Picture by John Mugumya

If I had not listened to this lady’s talk or did the two assignments (topic audit and topic creation) I would have had no idea that’s the role of a technical communicator.

I have an old iPhone 7. It still works. But a few years ago, I started noticing that every time I updated the software version, I’d get notifications popping up on my screen as ‘Tips’. They’d be highlighting new features on my phone like how to Customise Siri Suggestions, or how to Mention Someone in a Group Message.

These features are a product of software engineers who pack them onto our gadgets but, it is the technical writer who will normally get to highlight them for the user. Or help the user out them to real use. What would be the purpose of adding a good feature to phone software for instance if no one gets to use it simply because users don’t know that that feature exists?

  1. Teaching yourself

Previously students benefitted from lab sessions where the instructors would help them get started on using some of the tools used in the industry. This year, because of Covid19, students have been forced to figure out most of the stuff on their own. And freelance instructors on platforms like YouTube have played a crucial role in this instruction. For instance, I have been working with computers for over 20 years, but I had never bothered to learn how to generate a Table of Contents. I was competent at generating one after a five-minute video.

If this week’s learning highlighted anything, it is the fact that we need more technical communication skills.

Till next week

John

Before you go, please help rate this blog by filling the form below.

References

Baker, M., 2013. Every Page is Page One. 1 ed. s.l.:XML Press.

Comments

bottom of page