Tips to Connect Different Standpoints in Technical Writing
Writing technical stuff is a peaceful fight between two subject matter experts (SMEs): the technical writer, as the communication expert, and the engineer, as the technical subject matter expert
Yes, it is a fight. No blood flows, but it is a battle.
Why? Because the two fighters have divergent aims and visions.
Technical writers aim to write instructions and descriptions that non-expert people can consume to use products easily.
Engineers aim to describe in detail the internal logic of their products because they believe this information helps use the products correctly.
Do you see the conflict? Technical writers aim to hide what the engineers, as the SMEs, seek to show.
No one of them is wrong, but one of them may be out of context.
Context
When it comes to using a product, whatever it is, users are interested in what the product solves to make their life simpler.
That’s it.
Some users may be curious and want a more profound knowledge of how the product works, but they are rare people.
Instead, most users want a solution, full stop. Anything more is too much and quickly becomes a new problem. Still, users do not want additional problems, no matter how charming they could seem to engineers.
Are thankless users those who neglect to acknowledge the fascination with the inner details of products? Perhaps, but it does not matter.
That is the context of the fight between technical writers and SMEs. Who is out of context between the two?
Opposite tendencies
Given the context, which is users in front of products, technical writers and SMEs have different approaches:
- Technical writers tend to simplify every aspect of the product description is feasible to simplify.
- SMEs tend to share deep knowledge about the product.
Both these opposite approaches honestly look after the same goal: to enable users to use products correctly.
Nevertheless, technical writers and SMEs ground their approaches on opposite assumptions:
- Technical writers think the less information delivered, the best.
- SMEs believe the more information supplied, the best.
Both tend to be extreme, while the context where users must solve their problems requires balance. Both tend to be out of context. Yet, one is responsible for staying in and always being the voice of users.
Connecting standpoints
Since technical writers are the communication experts, they must go beyond their standpoint to connect to the SME one.
The standpoint that connects the two opposite ones is their synthesis: the balance between too little and too much.
Technical writers’ dream is to describe everything in a way that a five-year-old child understands. That could be too little information to provide users.
For example, think of complex medical equipment. Force the instruction manual to be so simple to allow a child to consume it would be a mistake and an announced failure.
On the other hand, engineers, as SMEs, have the opposite dream; they want to communicate not only and not so much how to use the product but how the product works.
Eventually, the connection is a balance: to describe how the product works to the extent that the information is functional in explaining how to use the product.
Conclusions
It is necessary to go beyond the horizon where a problem occurs to solve that problem. That is the case when reconciling the standpoints of technical writers and SMEs.
Facing that reconciliation, we get to the root of the communication: purposeful connecting people.
Describe how the product works to the extent that the information is functional in explaining how to use the product.
In technical communication, that root is even more foundational. Different actors likely have divergent aims when it comes to purposes of communication. Technical writers are in charge of mitigating this natural dynamic by always and constantly bringing the users’ standpoint to the table.
When technical writers meet SMEs, they must have a unique goal: make the users’ life simple and, if possible, more straightforward than before.
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