More or Less

In what has become a weekly ritual, last night (Tuesday, 3/10/2015) I read the Sunday (3/8/2015) edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I do not do this because I want to read old news. Instead, our weekly garbage & recycling pickup day is Wednesday so if I don't read the paper and put it in the recycling bin, it will sit in my recycling bin for an extra week. Of course, no, nothing is hurt - living or non-living - by it sitting in the recycle bin in the garage for an extra week. Of the articles I read last night, the one that has me really thinking about my technical writer career is this one about content. While the article doesn't mention technical writing in the article, I agreed with the message.

In fact, one of the driving initiatives with our "next generation" of software for our "next generation" of documentation was that we don't need to tell the user to click a button with the label "Add" when the task they are completing is called "Adding a Widget." We approached our documentation with the idea that the User Interface (UI) and the documentation work together, not as islands in the same ocean. While that was a noble idea, the feedback we have thus far received from our users is that without explicit step-by-step instructions (including a step to "click Add" in a procedure), the documentation isn't helpful.

Which brings me back to the article. My aim is to create content that will help the user complete a task. The common scenario that I keep in my head is that Suzy Clerk is trying to complete a task that she thought she knew how to do but when she got into the system to actually do it, she couldn't remember something - it doesn't matter what it is - so she went to the user guide (what my department writes) to get assistance. If she gets to the place in the user guide that is about the task she's trying to complete and the information she finds is helpful, then our job is a success. If she gets to that place and the only information she finds is unhelpful, then we are not successful. If the content I write / create is driven by the single goal - to help Suzy Clerk - then I don't really care if there is a lot of content or if it is sparse. That said, throwing words into the content like "simply" (as mentioned in this post) must be questioned. In fact, as I write, I question whether if each and every word helps Suzy Clerk.

I hope I've made her a satisfied woman. <grin>