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Re: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School
Subject:Re: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 30 Aug 2004 10:42:56 -0700
"Users" or "poor schmucks" do indeed ask for lots of things. Some of
these are things they actually need to use the product as your company
advertises it, some are things they only think they need but don't really,
some are things they want but which don't support your company's
strategy to make a profit on the product. As a "company advocate,"
i.e., member of the development team, your job is to help ensure that
the users are provided with the first, educated to understand that they
don't really need the second, and never clued into the possibility that
the third could have been provided in the current release. These are
not things you can help accomplish by being as unknowledgeable as
your user or by robotically documenting every aspect of the product
as-is without feeding back to the developers. If you are approaching
your work from either of these directions, you are probably going to
either fail in your work or at the very least not have a very satisfying
experience doing it.
Gene Kim-Eng
"TechComm Dood" <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote in message news:248329 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> The "poor schmuck" you advocate will ask for lots of things. Many of
> those things will not be things other "poor schmucks" will need or
> want.
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