The 1 Tip in Technical Communication
Back to the future, from the age when technical documents still describe the product
I recently attended the tcworld conference in Stuttgart, where I gathered trends and patterns in technical writing. It was amazing!
Yet, I was surprised to discover that there is still in place a fight between two technical communication approaches:
- Product-centric: the goal is to describe every and each detail of products.
- User-centric: the goal is to help users to get value from products.
The two alternatives remind me of the difference between passive and active voice.
In a product-centric approach, the actor — the product user — is in the background, as in a passive sentence, where you first read the action and then get by whom the action was performed.
Why is a user-centric approach a game-changer in technical writing?
The purpose
Technical writing aims to serve users by guiding them when using a product, and both approaches are coherent with this purpose.
Yet, the product-centric approach neglects the user’s experience while learning about the product: it’s a mere knowledge transfer. Sure: knowledge transfer serves the user because it teaches how the product works and behaves.
The question that leads to the user-centric approach is: the teaching way is a good user experience? I mean: people don’t read technical stuff for pleasure, and the purpose is not entertainment. Nevertheless, as technical writers, we agree that we don’t have to frustrate our readers: right?
Even an instruction manual is part of the users’ environment: it has to be friendly to be effective. This nuance completes the purpose and leads to the user-centric approach.
The way
The way of serving users makes the difference: it’s about efficiency.
When focusing on the product, every detail must be there because technical writing does not declare which actions the user must do with the product.
Instead, efficiency comes into play when focusing on a limited set of actions that users can perform with the product. Listing what users can do makes scannable the technical documentation and allow them to get what they need to know quickly.
The product-centric approach looks like a dense paragraph where everything about the product is there. Otherwise, the user-centric approach looks like a bullet list where it’s easy to scan which piece of information gets to which result.
Since people don’t read technical documents for pleasure, they need an efficient way to learn the product just enough to get their things done. That’s efficiency.
The most relevant tip
When writing technical stuff, you can share knowledge or guide to get things done. What’s the difference?
The mere knowledge sharing has a blurred focus on actions: the aim is awareness. That’s why in a product-centric way, technical communication tends to be as complete as possible by giving all details: it does not declare which actions users can do and how.
Here we are! The most relevant tip is: to define the list of possible actions of the users and make them scannable.
No surprise that the most relevant tip corresponds to the most foundational indications in technical writing:
- Use the active voice (that’s the actions of the users).
- Prefer bullet or numbered lists to huge paragraphs (that’s the scannability).
Conclusion
The time spent to complete a task is pivotal.
The product-centric approach to technical writing neglects that facet of the story. That’s why the user-centric approach leads to more efficient technical communication.
When reading an instruction manual, the less time the user spends, the better the user experience. That’s only possible if technical writers design the instruction manual around the user by considering limited usage scenarios and making them easily discoverable.
Any other best practice derives from that direction, based on the simple question: who’s my audience?
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