RE: Motivation and satisfaction in technical writing

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

> It would be interesting in what the techwriters find their motivation for
> working so hard? Please, share some ideas.
> In software development particularly, the latest trends are for "zero
> learning" - interfaces are so easy to navigate that the users
> don't need to
> read any documents. The usability test in our company also proved
> that only
> about 5% are refering to the help or printed documentation of any kind.

It is important to realize that it is highly unusual for a home/office
product to have more documentation than will fit on the side of a box. We
discussed this issue about a month ago. A temporary effect of the
microprocessor revolution was to push complex and unfamiliar products with
complex and unfamiliar interfaces into the mainstream home/office market.
The created a wholly aberrant need for large scale documentation for this
class of products. Now the public's growing familiarity with these products
combined with their growing sophistication and ease of use is putting us
back in the realm of "what will fit on the side of the box" documentation
requirements for many products.

> As a freshman in the branch (2 years) I am starting to loose my
> motivation -
> for whome am I acually writing?
> I waist my time writing whitepapers for my colleagues from development
> departments, then they come to me asking: "Please explain me how
> it works, I
> know that you know it you have written about it probably.., and
> you know, I
> don't feel like reading whitepapers"

That is part of the social life of information. People who want to know how
to do something refer first to their experience, second to their neighbors,
and only third and last to written documentation.

So who are you writing for?

- For the person who does not have access to information from their
experience or from their neighbors

- For mavens, the people who have to know everything about everything and
are the prime sources of information in their social networks.

In many situations, these two groups may represent a very small portion of
the total user population, though the population of people of the first type
may be much higher in complex or specialized industrial settings than it is
in home/office situations.

Despite the low readership, the documentation still has to be there to
educate the mavens. In some cases, however, the product will have become
sufficiently transparent that the mavens will have become largely
self-sufficient, and extensive documentation may no longer be necessary at
all.

---
Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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