Silly tests?

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 A few months back, Mom H. gave a course on interpersonal
 relations to a group of tech. writers. The course
 requirement were for one writing assignment, and with my
 help, Mom developed one: to document the preparations for
 producing a large formal dinner for a group of the
 company's clients. She provided very few details to the
 writers and waited for them to fall into several obvious
 (to us) traps. When she presented this task to the class,
 everyone initially took Stephen Victor's attitude: what the
 fuck does this have to do with technical writing, and why
 are you insulting my intelligence with this? (This attitude
 is less forgivable for a student, but still surprising for
 a professional... if you'd seen some of what I had to
 document...)

 By the time the class had completed the task, about half
 still somewhat resented having to do it, but grudgingly
 acknowledged its validity. The remainder enthusiastically
 endorsed the approach. Mom hit them over the head with two
 important points that most of them hadn't even considered:

 1. What are the actual (not assumed) parameters of the
 task? Finding out what your boss wants you to do is the
 first step in any docs project. Mom did some interesting
 role-playing as the recalcitrant, techwhirler
 non-respecting boss who had to be interviewed to get these
 details, and as the "technical expert on cooking turkey"
 who had no time for techwhirlers. Any of this sound
 familiar? <grin>

 2. Who will be using the manual? You need to do some form
 of audience analysis, no matter how trivial the doc task.
 In this case, Mom posed the problems of an audience
 including Jews and Moslems (no pork, some potential kosher
 food issues) and vegetarians (do they just eat bread if you
 provide only meat as a main course?). Without investigating
 the issue of dietary restrictions, the dinner would have
 been a disaster.

 You can't write a manual if you don't know the answer to
 either of these questions. The purpose of a trivial test
 such as buying lettuce for a salad is to produce an example
 that is fast and easy to document in an interview (i.e.,
 considerate of the interviewee's time) and that tests
 whether the writer actually understands anything about the
 serious issue of erroneous assumptions (taking things for
 granted). I'd suggest that it's not productive to be
 offended by such tests, but rather to make an effort to
 understand why an interviewer might pose them.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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