It’s not the tool, it’s the writer
27 Jun
Posted by Scott as opinion, technical communication, technology
The tool is not important. I remember reading those words at Gordon McLean’s blog and nodding in silent agreement. I think that technical communicators can put too much of their focus on tools and technologies at times — sometimes because of the promise of those tools and technologies, and sometimes just to to embrace our inner geeks.
But, as Gordon said, the tool is not important. At least, not to the users of the documentation that we produce. A person reading a help file doesn’t care if it was generated from FrameMaker sources using WebWorks or from a Word file using RoboHelp. All they want is for the content to be useful.
Content first
We can wax poetic about DITA and topic-oriented authoring, about Web 2.0, about screencasts, and everything else that’s hip in tech comm circles these days. But unless our documentation is clear, concise, complete, correct, and consistent then it’s not worth much. And if it doesn’t solve a problem that the user is facing, then the documentation is useless.
Case in point. I was reading this article the other day on one person’s trials and tribulations with something called QBox. It’s not the most user-friendly application by all accounts. But the writer of the article made a point about the documentation:
Oh yeah, and clicking on the “User Guide” just played a long and tedious video with no useful information. The “Help” section consisted of a FAQ that didn’t address anything related to my issues.
Good use of technology there, but the tech writing obviously left something to be desired.
Changing focus
The software and technologies that we use are more for our convenience than anything else. I don’t believe that they bring as much value to the reader as we sometimes think they do. I’ve known technical writers who have used the latest kit and the documentation they’ve churned out didn’t pass muster. On the the other hand, I’ve known more than one technical communicator who used Word or an older version of Frame and produced great documentation.
Technical writing software is great. Learning how to do things with it is interesting and rewarding. But we’ve got to remember that content is still king. Keeping content foremost in your thoughts and actions will do more for the reader than blindly (or with open eyes) embracing the latest and greatest technology.
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4 Responses
Kai
June 27th, 2008 at 6:10 am
1Good post! But I’m wondering if it doesn’t stop halfway:
“A person reading a help file doesn’t care [what it was] generated from. All they want is for the content to be useful. Content First.”
Shouldn’t it be “users first”? My tech doc content (and my way of serving it) can be clear, concise, complete, correct, and consistent all it wants, if it doesn’t help my users, it misses the mark.
So I’m trying to find out
- who “my” users are,
- what they seek to do with the product,
- how this is best achieved with the product and
- what media my users use (videos, online help, books)
before designing structure and format of the content.
I’ve found a good and current discussion that gets the tool-driven web 2.0 hype down to earth in the book Groundswell: It targets executives who feel that they should get a blog, a forum or something web 2.0. And it suggests a “POST” process, where you address People, then Objectives, then Strategy, then Tools.
Scott
June 27th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
2Kai,
You make good points (as usual). A lot of what you mentioned, though, is wrapped up in the concept of the 5 Cs. I really should do a blog post expanding that concept one of these days …
But you are correct: technical communicators should know what their audience needs and in what format. Forcing a format on them isn’t the way to go, no matter how wonderful that format it is.
Gordon
June 30th, 2008 at 4:33 am
3Kai, I just received my copy of said book, I will attack with some vigour this week!
And yes, the user is always the focus first and foremost. There is a diagram in my head that I’ll put together soon, about how *I* think we should be prioritising things and tools are WAY down the list!
one man writes » Consideration Layer Model
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 am
4[...] of covering in greater detail at some point later on, it’s handy when someone else gives me a nudge about an old post (namely, The tool is not [...]
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