Technical communication

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

How Do You Define a User’s Information Need?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Tue, 2015-03-17 07:39.

As a technical communicator, you probably know why you write manuals. It’s because you want to satisfy the user’s information need. But how do you know what information users need?

Your answer will differ depending on how you define an “information need,” which is a central concept in the world of technical communication. The purpose of this article is to distinguish between two conflicting definitions of an information need, and to show how each perspective represented affects the design of end user assistance.

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

How Can We Help Users Judge the Relevance of Content?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Tue, 2015-02-17 10:11.

It’s not difficult to find information— just open a user manual or search on Google. What users find difficult, is assessing whether the found information is relevant. Learn how to better support users in making accurate relevance judgments by designing your content for enhanced findability.

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

Can Tech Writers Create Links without Even Writing Them?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Tue, 2014-12-30 10:17.

This article discusses why links are important, and how technical communicators can make them without actually explicitly writing them.

The technical communication community has come to the agreement that creating a link strategy, and the actual links, is a time consuming affair.

In this article I show how links can be generated from content classification (that is, lists of metadata —taxonomies — used to classify content).

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

Why Should Technical Communicators Avoid Target Group Analysis?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Wed, 2014-11-19 14:12.

How do you know that the method you’re using to identify user tasks, such as Target Group Analysis, actually leads to the information users need? This article shows why such analysis is dangerous thing, and suggest an alternate solution.

In pursuit of the ultimate techCom information architecture

Why is it Important to Design for the Searching User?

Blog entry: Submitted by Jonatan Lundin on Mon, 2014-10-13 08:06.

Because if we don’t, us technical communicators will be out of a job. To stay competitive in our field, we must embrace change and design for the searching user of today. A design approach called dialogism might be what you need.

Well, I might exaggerate, but If we as technical communicators continue designing according to the book paradigm, we face the risk that our employer will cut back on technical documentation budgets in favor of other, more efficient solutions, such as social customer support, or virtual assistance.