RE: Motivation and satisfaction in technical writing

[Lyn Worthen <Lyn -dot- Worthen -at- caselle -dot- com>]

Thanks, Mark, for defining me as a "maven."  Validation, at last!

Seriously, though, in the past six months I've had the opportunity to use
three new software packages, each of which came with more documentation than
would fit on the back of the box:
 - one designed for home users (came with a 60-pg book)
 - one designed for your average executive (came with a 45-page PDF)
 - one designed for reasonably skilled instructional designers (came with a
600+ page book)

Two of the three, I have found to be inadequate to the point of tempting me
to make notes of my use of the product and submit proposals for revised docs
to the manufacturers, and one that had reasonably useful documentation,
although there are still several "tasks" that lack instructions (I'm told
that the tool can do the task, but not been able to find instructions for
actually doing it in the 600+ page book).

For the most part, I've figured out how to perform most of the necessary
tasks in all three programs, and documented my own workarounds when the
information wasn't included in the docs, but I keep coming back to the same
question: two of these products are intended for an audience with minimal
technical skills. Would I have been able to be productive with either of
them in any reasonable timeframe if I had not come to them with many years
of experience using more complicated products? (If I weren't a "maven"?)

I just finished writing the help files for a product intended for a totally
non-technical audience.  Other than a brief start-up guide (about 6-8 pps),
no documentation will be provided with this product.  I went to great length
to make it easy for non-technical users to find the answers to their
questions, make the information clean, simple, and task-based, etc.  In
other words, I did my utmost to provide them with everything that, IMHO,
should have been in a user guide.  Will it be enough? We'll see (the product
is in Beta testing now). 

I guess I'm just saying that it's not -just- mavens & newbies we're writing
for. Everyone knows how to use a refrigerator, but there was a 20-pg user
guide in the box with my new one. "Intuitive" applications still need to be
installed, configured, & maintained (last spring I wrote two manuals - one
for the non-technical end-users of a product, and the second for the DBAs
who need to set it up and administer it behind-the-scenes).  Right now I'm
writing material to train our sales people on how to sell our products.

It's been my experience that there's a wide variety of material that we can
be writing. I guess that means that the key to TW survival is in our ability
to diversify.

L


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Baker 
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 1:42 PM

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.

...<snip>...

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.

...<snip>...

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.

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