Month: July 2008

bookmark_borderConsideration Layer Model

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As a technical writer, every decision you make is influenced by several discrete things, considerations for either the audience of the information, the process you’ll need to follow to collate and verify the information, and so on. Every decision requires such considerations but is it possible to model these?

Some background first; I don’t revisit my old posts nearly as often as I should and, as there are certain topics that I tackle with the vague idea 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 important).

That said, such topics are typically the hardest ones to consider, the big picture things that end up with my brain reeling as I try to narrow down this wonderful profession into something digestable without generalising (genericising?) so much that it becomes worthless. Still, that’s never stopped me trying, so I’ll bash on and see what falls out of my head.

My post about how the tool is not important looks at the other areas that need to be consider if you are investigating upgrading or changing your main authoring tool, and was largely prompted by our upcoming move from FrameMaker to Author-it. The post is focussed on tools (obviously) but looking back it only mentions a rather large consideration in passing, namely “focussing discussions on the audience, the expectations”.

Such is the way of things when it comes to Technical Communications, anytime you take a step back you realise that there are many things to consider, all of which impact on one another even though they are distinctly different. The audience requires to have information delivered in a particular format (technical consideration), and in a particular voice (writing theory). They’d also like it structured a certain way (information design) and of course they’d quite like it to be accurate and up-to-date (working practice).

As a manager of a technical communications team, all of these things feature in my thinking almost every day. Anytime something new lands on my desk or a new issue is discovered that needs to be corrected my brain runs through the gamut of considerations trying to figure out how best to tackle the work. The more often this happens the more I look for a model of how best to tackle such things and, as I’ve not really found one, I thought I’d take a bash at creating something myself.

This is a first draft, it is still very crude and is missing a lot of detail but as a starting point I think it might work. The premise is simple enough, for each piece of work undertaken by a typical software technical writer (yes, I’m making some assumptions), there are various items that need to be taken into consideration and these can be broadly broken down into four layers – Audience, Content, Theory, and Tools – and within each layer there are a number categories of consideration.

Rather than try and tackle the entire thing, I’m going to focus on the big pieces first.

The following layers are the broadsweep of the model, and I think most technical communication considerations can be allocated to one of the following;

  • Audience – be it preferences for format and media, scenarios for which they require information, through to a detailed understanding of how they work.
  • Content – the main output needs to be considerate of audience, and as such will be provided in different forms (written, graphical and so on). It also needs to be sourced properly, written, reviewed and published.
  • Theory – depending on where you are on the IPMM, this layer may be thin but it will still exist and covers working practice as well as in-house guidelines. It also covers larger view methodologies such as single source, minimalism in writing and so on.
  • Tools – the lowest layer as it is furthest removed from the user but still has a significant impact as it is directly tied in to the writing process itself.

So, does any of this make sense to anyone? Or is it just me? Over the next few posts I’m aiming to delve a little deeper into each layer, presuming I’ve gotten them correct and we’ll see what lies within.

Consider this very much a work in progress, and feel free to point out my errors. Comments are welcomed.

bookmark_borderLandfill Indie

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Great article about the current state of the UK music scene.

Now, whilst I disagree that the Fratellis fall into this camp and feel it is a tad harsh to blame all of this on the Arctic Monkeys, the article mirrors my current thoughts, largely fuelled by listening to X-FM in the morning commute to work (Not a fan of Radio 2 in the mornings, nor the inane chat on Radio Scotland and Radio Clyde). There seems to be a lack of anything new and original, with band after bland band churning out the same punk-lite, faux gritty, rat-a-tat-tat style tunes.

It’s no wonder I’m reaching for some old favourites every time I fire up iTunes.

You don’t need to read the article to get a basic understanding of what is being said, and I’m sure most people who are aware of the current music scene have already moved on from all those definite article bands (The … ) and are currently enjoying bands such as Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend, but there is one quote that sticks out and I think is worth repeating:

“Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan’s scrotum emptying. They’re abysmal.”

Which captures what I’m trying to say perfectly.

bookmark_borderMore nothing

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I’m not sure if it’s the lull after the last few frantic weeks but I find myself ebbing between tasks, bumping around on the current, rudderless for the moment, with nary a breeze to prod me gently onwards.

In saying that I did re-organise the bedroom yesterday, whilst Louise shampooed the living room carpet. We were going to shuffle the living room about but, due to the space and dimensions we are kinda limited. As we had talked about doing the same with the bedroom I tackled that, moving a chest of drawers into the next room (now known as the “walk in wardrobe”), and moving the bed under the window. It gives us a lot more floor space although I’m not entirely sure what to do with it all!

We paused in the afternoon and nipped out to see Wall-E. It’s a great movie, quite dark in parts, but well-paced, funny, moving and thought provoking. Quite a feat. The story telling is first-rate, and whilst I was expecting more time to be spent setting up the premise and allowing the audience to buy-in to Wall-E’s plight, I now realise that as that wee robot is soooo darn cute they didn’t need to.

An aside, the scene where Wall-E is chasing the red laser dot across the terrain, I’m pretty sure they stole that from the way Oll-E (as he will now be known) does exactly the same thing.

And so to today.

Today I’m on holiday. I’m waiting in for the nice Sky installation engineer man to arrive (before 1pm, he promised) and install our Sky HD box. I’m both excited and sad about this.

Excited because I’m really looking forward to watching HD movies!

Sad because my gadget splurging is at an end. Guess I’ll just go and check my email on my iPhone, play a little Burnout on the PS3 and then settle down to watch a movie in high definition. It’s a hard life…

bookmark_borderNormality resumed

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… whatever that is…

As the week draws to a close my mood is liftening (err… that’d be “lightening” and “lifting”) considerably. I’ve spent the last week facilitating meetings which have the teams looking at how they work and coming up with improvements. To get to the improvements they are asked to consider what went well (with the aim of taking those things forward) and what didn’t go so well (aka “badly”) with the aim of putting actions in place to stop them happening again.

Needless to say, fixing things is a lot harder than dealing with things that already work, so the process can be kinda draining. Looking back on this week (this is the second time I’ve filled this role) is always good, it is productive and useful but it is really tough going. Hence why it’s been so quiet here.

So what else is new?

Well iPhone aside not much just yet, in a finally flurry of gadget related activity we are shelling out for Sky+HD (or whatever it’s called these days). I managed to snag free installation and a half price box through a friends and family thing, and given that our current Sky+ box is on it’s last legs (hard drive is failing, missing recordings and so on) we’d have to pay out anyway.

And aside from that the only other thing I’ve got to say is that if you have a PS3 and are thinking about buying Metal Gear Solid 4… don’t. Unless you don’t mind a “gametime” of 2hrs which includes all of… 20 mins ACTUALLY PLAYING THE FECKING GAME!!!! I had heard there were a few cut scenes but it’s ridiculous. It may suit others, but I just don’t have the patience.

I’m slowly getting through the backlog in Google Reader, but we’ll see how hungover I am tomorrow after our Dev team night out tonight.

bookmark_borderQuick iPhone Thoughts

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Whilst it isn’t as full featured as, say, the HTC Touch Diamond, I can’t think of anything that I’m really missing.

Text messages appearing as a conversation thread is so much better than the traditional display method (one text per screen).

Intuitive? Very. Although there are a few funny things, for example, you CAN set the keyboard shift button to turn into a CAPS LOCK style key, but it’s disable in the Settings by default.

Tip: To switch between keyboard modes (to add a ? for example), press and hold your finger on the 123 mode toggle button, keep your finger on the screen and slide to the ? and then let go. The keyboard inserts the ? and automatically flips you back to the ABC mode. Smart!

The screens is stunning, I’ve encoded Blade Runner to MP4 and… WOW.

Surfing the web and want to dial a number on a webpage? Click it. Simple.

Apps – 10 million were downloaded over the weekend. Impressive numbers. Some aren’t so good, but some, like Vicinity are awesome. It uses the built-in GPS to figure out your current location, then polls Yahoo Local directories to get you lists of taxis, restaurants and so on.

In short, I’m glad I waited a year to get my hands on this phone. The list of niggles is small and, quite honestly (and yeah yeah, call me a fanboy) it’s the best phone I’ve ever used.

Caveat: my last phone, a Samsung D800, was a crock of shit, but still. The iPhone is a helluva piece of kit. It, honestly, just works.

bookmark_borderStop Writing Manuals

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No-one reads the documentation anyway, so why do we persist in writing user guides, instruction manuals and all the other types of document-centric information silos that we all quietly loathe creating in the first place?

Unless you have a contractual agreement to compile information into a document, it’s our job to figure out how best to get the right information to the user at the right time. It’s down to us, no-one else.

And I, for one, have failed to do my best, instead I’ve hidden behind the usual arguments of “ohh but that was how it was when I got here”, or “we don’t get to speak to our users so it’s hard to know what they want”.

OK, so I’m deliberately setting out a pretty bleak scenario here and, like everything, your own situation is probably not that dire, or is certainly further towards the ‘good’ end of a sliding scale.

However, the fact remains that a lot of thought and effort goes into creating content and perhaps not enough is placed on the delivery of said content. The mediums of the past are still valid but are increasingly being replaced and (and this is important) these new mediums are part of customer expectation.

I need look no further than myself to give you an example.

I am fairly careful with my money in that I tend to do a lot of research before buying a product. Whilst I have just purchased an iPhone, I didn’t buy the first version because my research suggested it would’ve been a mistake.

Part of my research is, quite simply, to see what kind of supporting information exists for the product I’m considering purchasing. Can I download or view the product documentation, and if so, what format is it in? What about user forums or support websites? Knowledge bases and articles? The latter are, increasingly, higher up my preference list than the former to the point where I’m pretty sure I’d buy if it had no user guide but a thriving user/support forum.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for our old friend, the product manual, but I would suggest it is under threat. Previously, to receive validated and trusted product information, I’d go to the product manual or support staff, anything that was produced by the people that make the product.

Now?

Now, thanks to reputation systems (points system that users build up the more the offer to, and interact with, a website) and the ability to cross-check information quickly and easily on the internet, I am far more likely to trust a post or article written by a complete stranger.

The wisdom of the crowd comes into play here of course, the more people that use your product the better the chance of a unique and useful scenario being documented and published, but there is no reason why we, the technical writers, cannot insert ourselves into that stream. Refocussing why we deliver information is a crucial part of the changes taking place in our industry.

Because, to be frank, if we don’t start looking around and changing how we work, we may soon be redundant. In every sense of the word.