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Subject:RE: What Are Writing Skills? From:"Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:38:24 -0800
How you understand how the product works may very well tell you nothing
about what the user uses the product for.
The engineers understand how the product works. What they don't always
understand is now the user will user it to do their tasks.
For example, the cash register manuals I have talked about were originally
written by engineers. They were literally useless to the user - there was no
understanding of the tasks the user needed to perform when they used the
cash register. The old manual was organized - read: structured - by how the
engineers saw the product - very feature based. The return rate was
exceptionally high.
My company redid the manuals, restructuring them to be task based - how the
user saw the product in the way they were running their business. The return
rate plummeted.
Structuring the information refers to climbing in the users head(s) and
identifying those things the user needs to know to use the product for what
the user wants to use the product for. Then structuring the information so
the user can find that information and relate it to what they are using the
product for. That may mean structuring from the simple tasks to the complex.
It may mean from the gatekeeper tasks to the least used tasks. There are a
number of valid ways to do it and it depends on your audience.
Little to none of this has anything to do with your understanding of how the
data flows thru the product. In fact, you may never know how the data moved
thru the product. I never did in the cash registers. No one but the
engineers cared.
Your DFDs may help you understand something but they are not the Holy Grail
of technical writing nor would they necessarily tell you anything about the
users tasks or what needs to go in the manual to help the user.
sharon
Sharon Burton
CEO, Anthrobytes Consulting
951-369-8590
www.anthrobytes.com
President of IESTC
-----Original Message-----
Tony Markos asks:
Please define what the structuring of information is.
To me, once a TW, through analysis, properly
structures his/her understanding of the product,
structuring the information (the text) is a straight
shot. Dick, please tell me what additional
structuring you see!
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