Jonatan Lundin's blog

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

What principles of organizing content should we adopt instead of organizing content in static book like manuals?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Sat, 2013-04-13 09:41. Last updated on Sat, 2013-04-13 09:41.

Many companies know that customers want new types of content and dynamic delivery but organizations appear hesitant and feel unready to face the challenges. It is a fact that the technical communication community needs to move away from delivering manuals as linear books where content is organized in static arbitrary hierarchies (= table of content). What are the alternatives? Well, the technical communication community can learn much from the academic research community who has used an innovative way of organizing research articles. It is all about making information findable.

What does it mean to predict user questions following a reversed taxonomical approach?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Thu, 2013-03-07 16:05. Last updated on Thu, 2013-03-07 16:05.

Are you a technical communicator? Do you call yourself an information architect or an information designer? Are you responsible for the design of your company's product manuals? Are you specifying what type of information these manuals contain and how that information is structured? Are you in a process of re-thinking what type of information to include in a manual and how to organize the same information to achieve high findability? Are you uncertain about how to do it? If so, this is the blog for you.

Do users have to search at all in future?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Tue, 2013-01-15 07:54. Last updated on Tue, 2013-01-15 07:54.

One of the main reasons behind users not using the manual, when experiencing problems in product use, is because the manual is perceived to require too much effort to use. A user that encounters a problem and starts to seek for help, has a certain level of motivation. Thus the user is willing to invest a certain amount of energy in finding the answer(s). If the perceived effort of using the manual is higher than what the user is willing to invest, the manual is not used.

How do a technical communicator know the EPPO pages to write?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Wed, 2012-12-05 17:49.

Jonatans blog has moved. You'll find it here: http://www.excosoft.se/index.php/about-us/blog/itemlist/user/46-jonatanl...

The latest post is about important aspects to consider as technical communicator when entering the new communication paradigm. You will write standalone answers to user questions. And provide filters to allow a user find answers. DITA maps used to organize topics in a static hierarchy for end user deliverables are not an option in the new communication paradigm. Such DITA maps belong to the old Gutenberg paradigm. Are you ready for the move?

Do you know how to design for the searching user?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Mon, 2012-09-17 13:56. Last updated on Wed, 2012-09-19 07:09.

Research has revealed that professional knowledge workers spend up to half of their productive time on searching and in many cases they do not find what they need. This is especially true for users of technical documentation, meaning that a lot of productive time is wasted on people searching in vain.