I refined and refined the language. I made sure each fact was accurately paraphrased and referenced. The article occupied so much of my attention, I worked on it over the weekend, and once late at night. After several days of focusing on practically nothing other than the article, I submitted it to the appropriate person for review.

After reading through the article, the reviewer noted that it was good, but it wasn’t entirely what she had it mind. Whereas I focused on information in the present, she wanted more stories from the past. More stories and anecdotes that show the larger point she wanted to make about the technology.

I returned to my desk, thinking about a new approach. She was right. Somehow, in writing the article, I had neglected story. Story was a key missing element.

The next day, I traveled to the main library for my organization, in downtown Salt Lake, to look for stories from the past. I immersed myself in old books, theses, articles, almanacs, and journals — looking for stories or interesting anecdotes that might illustrate the larger point we wanted to make. You have to read to find stories, or talk to people, I realized. Stories don’t just arrive at your desk while you’re hacking away at the language. You have to look for them as you might look for lost money.

While searching for stories, I realized a thing or two. Story is the form that speaks most clearly to our psyche, but life does not naturally play out in stories. For example, the events of my day are mostly mundane. Today I woke up, worked on some wordpress projects, drove to work, worked on some writing projects, played basketball at lunch, came home, ate lasagna, played in the backyard with my kids,  talked with a client on the phone, watched some TV, and here I am typing this blog post. Not a particularly memorable day. Next week I will remember almost nothing of what happened. It will become a blur in my past, just an average day of life.

If this were the substance of journals, histories, biographies, and other records, no one would read them. They would slip into non-use. It’s our nature to craft the mundane events of our lives into stories. We demand that a person’s life is no mere series of humdrum events. Life is a battle against conflict. It’s an attempt to reach a difficult goal. It’s a struggle to move in a particular direction that resists us. As such, we select the events that matter for that purpose. We heighten the detail that poses the antagonizing force. As we tell the story, we focus on the information that can be bent and shaped into a plot. And then we move towards a defining moment, which if we capture at exactly the right time, changes everything. We do all this even if it does not match history in a matter-of-fact way, because we thirst for story.

While researching and brainstorming stories, I began to see a different story develop than I had originally intended. Leveraging as many details as I could, I made a revision. I found all the ingredients I needed to rewrite the article in an interesting way. And with the help of a colleague, who supplied a fascinating quote, I landed a perfect ten in the conclusion, or so I thought.

The next week I submitted the revision for review. She read it and gave me a brief compliment before noting the purpose she had in mind followed another direction contrary to the position in my article. I still hadn’t really grasped what she wanted. I decided to scrap the entire approach and begin once more anew. Again, I crafted a new article. I painstakingly brainstormed a new approach, researched out the various points, and narrated it in a seamlessly smooth way.

But just as before, it didn’t meet the reviewer’s approval. Finally, I put the article on hold for a week. A couple of weeks later, the entire project was canceled.

At first I was stunned. I’d put at least two weeks worth of time into this article, and I thought at least some version of it was good enough, or salvageable, to avoid a fate in a content scrapyard.

Why had the entire project been canceled? This initial article was supposed to kick off a series of articles that would run throughout the year.

The effort was not worth the payoff, I was told. The hits we would receive from the article’s publication didn’t seem worth the time to write, review, and approve the content, especially with all the directors and leaders involved.

Although shocked, I also felt a sense of relief. I no longer had to do the project. There were a lot of other projects I could focus on instead. I could put this impossible article — and all those that would surely follow — completely out of my mind. Except I couldn’t entirely do that, for some reason.

For nearly a month I focused on other matters, but every now and then I brooded on the failed article. It seemed misguided in a fundamental way, but how? What did I do wrong? I had confidence in the quality of my writing. The essay read well. The problem, perhaps, was the initial assumption. We assumed that an article that takes a week to write should get a significant amount of visibility for the cost involved. If that visibility can’t be ensured, the article isn’t worth writing. Was that assumption correct?

It may be true to an extent. But it seemed like an easy approach to visibility, trying to leverage an existing platform that already had a sizeable readership. In today’s publishing, destination doesn’t matter as much anymore. Good content gets retweeted, blogged about, and shared on enough sites that the original URL isn’t all that significant.

But even more problematic is the idea that you can simply get instant visibility. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about blog readership, it’s that it takes time to grow an audience. There’s hardly a way to instantly grow your readership. Sure you may have a home run post that doubles or triples your existing readership, but in my experience, subscribers grow slowly and steadily. I add about 50 readers to my site a month. Each good post brings in about 15 new readers, while several leave as well. It’s slow going, and it takes a lot of time and patience. To think the whole effort isn’t worth it because it simply takes too much time for the payoff is thinking only in the short-term.

But how do you convince someone that the site may not achieve the visibility we want for at least three years, and that during that time, we’ll need to publish several high quality posts a week? Online publishing isn’t an overnight sensation that erupts when you write one or two engaging posts. You have to write solid content over a period of years to build up the readership you want.

Despite my misgivings about the cancellation, the project was never resurrected. I instead fueled my efforts into another site that had a much smaller readership, and I wrote or edited article after article for that site. I no longer ghost-wrote anything. I simply wrote, and managed other writers and their writing. About 8 months passed by like this, writing and publishing at a steady pace of about 2 to 3 articles a week.

I am not sure that corporate business leaders have the patience and stamina to build up a loyal following of readers. It’s a long, slow, calculating process that cannot be won with a single post. That introductory post I labored over for weeks — it was just one nail in the framework for a house. Blogging requires steady content, week after week, persuading one reader at a time, one word at a time, that your site is worth reading, following, and sharing. Is any single article so important that it deserves endless scrutiny and revision before publishing? Perhaps instead what we need is writing and publishing endurance, the ability to keep going week after week, constantly seeking out the right content for the audience, and crafting it so that readers find it appealing.

Failed articles shouldn’t be a sore point. In the history of writing, how many countless articles have been written and never published? As a professional writer, I’ve developed thick enough skin that discarding weeks worth of effort shouldn’t upset me, nor undermine my self-confidence. Still, the way the discarded article keeps creeping into my psyche, returning again and again in unexpected hours, means I left something unresolved.

I still have the essay sitting on my hard-drive — about a dozen versions of it. I can’t put the article to rest in my mind, but rather continue to contemplate and reflect on it, like an unsolved mystery. A cold case that keeps stewing. It doesn’t want to die, I think.

I just re-read that essay I wrote months ago. Was my memory playing tricks on me? Was it really something that should have been discarded? All my literary judgment tells me no. It is as smooth and flawless as the day I wrote it.

Was there some element that needs discarding, some small line or paragraph that is poisoning the whole? Perhaps, but like a paring knife to a spot on a bad apple, I am confident I can carve it out.

It’s developed a life of its own now, and won’t be silenced.

Sooner or later, I am going to publish that darn essay.

————

photo by mishari, flickr

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1. Get involved as early as you can in the software development process. As soon as prototypes are available, or a functioning development environment, start the documentation process.
2. Think of all the main tasks users will do with the application. Make a list of the tasks and begin documenting them in careful detail.
3. As the application nears release, finalize your help material so that it’s ready when the application launches.
4. Once the application launches, move on to another project.

This traditional method of writing documentation places all the work before release. Sometimes I think the bulk of documentation should be written after release. This “reverse method” aligns more with support center philosophy. Some support centers believe you shouldn’t write anything until a user asks a question. Only then do you begin to document answers.

With a reverse approach to documentation, you place more emphasis on the help material after the release rather than before.

But you might object and say that our job is to anticipate the user’s questions and pain points so that when they do search the help file, the answers are there waiting. This in fact is Ginny Reddish’s premise in Letting Go of the Words. She encourages us to imagine a conversation with the user, anticipating their questions and responding as if in conversation.

I think imagination, even user interviews, are good techniques. However, too often I skip over this. I end up giving nearly every topic equal attention, documenting with careful detail both the obvious tasks and the difficult tasks. My imagination is usually an extension of the product manager’s vision and understanding, which I inherit from dozens of project meetings. The closer and more involved I get into a project, the less clearly do I see all the assumptions I’m making, the workflows I’m immune to, how blind I’ve become. No one can predict the future. How often have our anticipations and imaginations perfectly matched user reality? Do we even know the user’s reality?

With the traditional method of documentation, after the application is released, I’m not as closely involved with the project anymore. I don’t have my nose in JIRA; I’m not carefully monitoring all the incoming feedback. In my mind, I’m done. User pain points and frustrations often go unnoticed, while my attention shifts to new projects. I may add a topic here and there, or add some more detail, but by and large, documentation is mostly done when the application is released. I think that’s a harmful mentality that might be cured by a more reverse approach.

Let’s rethink the model. With a post-release documentation emphasis, the technical writer pays careful attention to every incoming question, comment, and feedback item from users. Whether through support center calls, forum questions, feedback emails, webinars, or other channels, the technical writer carefully monitors each question and begins building the help material from these questions. User feedback drives and shapes and structures the help material. It determines what we write, how much emphasis topics receive, and how visible we make those topics.

Now I’m not an extremist. I know that some help material is necessary when an application is launched. Quick reference guides and some basic help material would probably suffice. It would give something to the user to get started and not feel alone or abandoned. In some cases, a short series of video tutorials might also be helpful. After all, users need the most help when the application is newest to them, that is, when it’s first released. Abandoning the user in their time of greatest need may seem somewhat cruel and unproductive. I’m not saying no documentation should be written prior to release.

And yet, the long help file can wait. Wouldn’t we be much better to start writing help in an intensive, 100% heads-down manner during alpha and beta testing periods, and then during the first month of release? After all, how much time do we waste trying to figure out how a partially-built, bug-ridden application works in an unstable development environment? Wouldn’t our time be better spent waiting for the application to reach a near-production level, and then once that level is reached, focus all our energy on creating help material for it, based on questions and issues and frustrations users are experiencing?

Without a launch date for an application, there’s no clear date when documentation is done. In this post-release, reverse model, documentation can keep growing as long as users continue to ask questions and experience frustrations. Documentation is probably finished when the incoming feedback dies down, when most of the incoming questions can be answered with simple links to answers in the help.

Feb 3 update:

Check out this video from Greg DeVore that expands on some of the points I make in this post:

For a contrasting perspective on the idea of reverse documentation, see this post by Kristi Leach, When is it time to hire the technical writer?

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I spent an entire day clearing out his office. I boxed up about 15 boxes of books, which will be donated to Salvation Army. While sorting through his library, I found about five genres of books. They could roughly be classified into five piles: literary fiction, poetry, religion, dieting, and gardening. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at what he or she reads. I had no idea my dad’s interest in religion was so pervasive. I boxed up about 14 different bibles. He’s Russian Orthodox, so there was a lot of liturgical books, prayer books, and commentary about early Christian fathers, biblical commentaries, books on transformational christianity, and so on.

The other genres were not insignificant either. Poetry alone probably comprised three boxes — Wallace Stevens, Byron Scott, William Wordsworth, William Carlos Williams, Alexander Pope, and many more well-known poets. In his living room, he dedicated an entire bookshelf for Anne Dillard’s works.

Many books had bookmarks placed about 40 pages into the book, probably where he lost interest. Not every book is worth reading cover to cover.

While boxing, I set aside some books for myself, such as What the Dog Saw, a new book by Malcolm Gladwell, The Origin of Creativity (it looked interesting), John Muir’s Longest Walk, and Things I Learned About My Father in Therapy, an anthology by Heather Armstrong.

Looking at all the books in the library, I am not sure that reading deserves so much praise. Certainly, much of what we write is a response to what we read, coupled with our experiences. We need some level of information to write. But if reading is merely absorbing information, soaking it up like a sponge, at some point, reading becomes passive. The reader must do something with the information: contemplate, act, experiment, reflect, respond, try, hypothesize, write, and so on. Reading is a catalyst for action (unless it’s just a leisure activity, or something to do to fall asleep).

About six months ago, my father was up visiting me in Utah. During his stay, he was pouring through The Happiness Project, by Gretchin Ruben, and taking copious notes. Presumably, he was reading to discover ways to be happier. He wasn’t just soaking it in. He was reading to act.

In his youth, my father was an English graduate student at the University of Washington, and he planned to move to Australia and write the great American novel. But then he realized, through reading, that the great American novel had already been written, time and again. The realization took away his motivation to write.

He’s actually an excellent writer, so far as I can tell from his letters. My mother said he would often compose essays for his classes just once, with little or no edits, and get As. She was disappointed that he did not finish his PhD and become an English professor.

The market for English PhDs was just as bad in the 70s as it is today, so it’s no wonder my father pursued a different route. Instead of going the PhD route, though, he made a terrible choice: He bought a tavern, and drank himself into alcoholism. Alcoholism sort of derailed his life. He later joined AA and became sober — and has been for 30 years — but he feels alcohol was the cause of so many of his life’s problems. (Sponsor tip: Get more details on alcoholism treatment.)

While boxing up books, cleaning up notes and endless office papers, I kept wondering, why not write more? So what if the great American novel has already been written. Does that make it a vain, repetitive effort to write it again? Exactly how much time should you spend reading? Isn’t there personal value in writing, even if the writing is redundant to other writings?

My personal approach is to read moderately. I wish I were a more voracious reader, but ultimately my real goal is to write a page, or post, since I’m a blogger. I keep stacking up my posts on findability, one after the other. When I hit 100, I figure I’ll have explored the topic deeply enough to begin writing and organizing a book. All my research will be there, ready.

Reading is certainly a catalyst for thought. When I draw a blank for topics to write about, I just search twitter for #techcomm, and review the most interesting post I find. But I always want to move into the writing space, rather than just reading. When I write, it forces me to evaluate topics more rigorously. It requires me to think about what I think. It gives me space to explore, and allows me to dabble in the world of ideas.

I loaded about fifteen boxes of books into my dad’s old yellow pickup and drove several miles to the nearest Salvation Army. Though I donated the books, I did save all papers — journal entries, notes, binders, anything I could find that was a personal expression he had written. I guess books themselves, the ones you choose to keep and line your bookshelves with, are a personal expression that reflects your interests and life’s passions. But somehow they didn’t seem worth keeping.

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He said there’s no right way, but if you’re planning to figure it out as you go, it’s still a good idea to write your last chapter ahead of time. This way you know generally where you want to end up. If you don’t know how your novel is going to end, he said, you often wander around and eventually end your novel in fanciful/unbelievable way. Further, pantsers often lose motivation because they don’t know the point or meaning of their story.

Last week I set out to write the last chapter of my novel. It was tough and I only half-way completed it. Later, I realized there’s another last chapter I should write ahead of time: the last chapter of my professional career. Knowing the last chapter of my professional career might help me understand where I’m going, provide more meaning for the journey, and help align all of my activities toward that end.

I thought about what my last professional chapter might be. Here are some possible last chapters to my technical writing career (not projected until the year 2041 or so):

• Scenario 1: I create the perfect help system, one in which users understand and use the help material without even realizing they’re using help. Both young and old, tech savvy and tech novice learn the system without any trouble at all. Everything just seems so easy. When users have a question, they start typing and immediately see their answer in instant results, every time. It’s almost uncanny how their very question seems anticipated, already answered, before they even finish typing their sentence.
• Scenario 2: I write blog posts with such captivating stories that they get retweeted hundreds of times with thousands of comments from engaged readers. The posts ignite so much interest in the products that they overwhelm the IT group with new users signing up. Others in the company wonder how I do it, how I find the story when there doesn’t seem to be any, how I add details here and there to bring it out, to heighten the interest with such minimal strokes. The posts pull in readers entirely, overpowering them with an inability to disengage from the story.
• Scenario 3: As owner of my own company, I work in a little office in Argentina writing virtually for a large multinational company. In the evenings my wife and I explore new areas of the city. We move from one country to the next every year. From Argentina to India, then Italy, France, Mongolia, China — anywhere there’s an Internet connection.
• Scenario 4: I create a series of video tutorials that have such an engaging voice and dynamic delivery that users watching them are entertained and edified at the same time. It’s like watching a movie in which I’m the star actor, giving an award-winning performance. My performance comes naturally, without a script. Words and sentences align perfectly in my mind, and I have become so articulate that even Stephen Fry sounds dull in comparison.
• Scenario 5: My wife becomes a lawyer and I decide to stay at home, writing my novel. It becomes fantastically successful and thousands of fans line up for a book signings. I spend 4-5 hours writing, several more hours reading. I cook dinner for my wife who gets home each night, completely engaged in her high profile career.
• Scenario 6: My career just fades into the background. I’m sitting down at home around the dinner table with my four grown-up girls. They’re all stunning and beautiful in their own way, intelligent, full of life. They’re talking about their husbands and houses, their careers, children, and projects. We have a lovely dinner conversation as we laugh and talk for hours. We never talk about my work.

All of these scenarios are pretty weak. Scenario 1 is boring. Scenario 2 is more appealing but not ultimately fulfilling. Scenario 3 sounds fun but somewhat empty. Scenario 4 isn’t really what I want because it doesn’t involve writing. Scenario 5 is dreamy but somewhat cliche. Scenario 6 would be great, but it’s not very ambitious career-wise.

Maybe there isn’t a exciting climax to a career in technical communication. Perhaps each day is filled with its ups and downs, temporary enjoyment and occasional disappointment. After years of doing the same, you fall into a groove, a sustainable rhythm. Then it just kind of fades away, like a firework shot up into the air, climbing for a while, letting off a few sparks, but then descending, without any big explosion of light and color.

Although I value formats such as video tutorials and quick reference guide layouts, writing is my favorite activity. I guess I hope that, whatever the last chapter, I can focus on writing and take it to a level that I’ve never reached before. I know writing receives some of the least attention and value in our field. Compared to screencasts, illustrations, attractive quick reference guides, and XML, writing seems like something on par with a long e-mail from a least favorite relative.

So why place value in writing? The skill has become a commodity, right? Even if the cliche “anyone can write” isn’t true, that doesn’t mean the perception isn’t.

This is an issue I’ve wrestled with, and the only conclusion I come to is that “writing,” as people define it today, isn’t how I’m defining it. At its essence, writing is thinking. If the thinking has already been done, the act of articulating the thought is merely typing. When people disdain writing as a skill anyone possesses, they’re really talking about typing, or grammar and style. What I like about writing is the ability to explore ideas and to articulate them in fresh ways.

I also like writing’s ability to tell stories — stories that define and shape how we think and act. The most influential works throughout history, from literary texts to religious texts, have been nothing but words, sentences shaped into stories. They haven’t been screencasts or quick reference guides. Even art, the most probable contender, hasn’t shaped society in the same way as writing. It’s the stories and ideas — expressed through words — that matter most.

So despite the low value, despite the fact that fewer and fewer employers are placing value in it, my last chapter will involve writing.

—————

Photo from Flickr

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One difference is knowledge. On my professional blog, I already have the knowledge I need to write the post. I can pull from my own experience, or from books I’m reading, techniques I’m trying, documentation I’m writing, etc., as I craft a post. I have ideas brewing in my head all day, and in the back of my mind I’m always thinking of the next post.

On the corporate blog, though, I can’t always pull from my own experience. I don’t know the details of what I should write, because I’m not the subject matter expert. I have to track down the experts, and then ask them the right questions. I have to hunt around for the story; I have to locate the information.

In addition to gathering information from external sources, on the corporate blog I also have to stay away from controversy. Every story ends positively. I can’t go for the jugular, so to speak, and enter controversial territory with an open-mind like I can on an independent blog. Instead, the end is usually written from the beginning. Things turn out well for the company.

Another problem with corporate blogs is the lack of voice. Is there really an “I”? Or is it a fake “I”? If there is no true “I” behind the posts, how can the blog ever move beyond marketing material and corporate communications? And if there is an “I”, do I no longer represent the company or organization that I’m writing on behalf of (because I am myself now)? How do I both represent myself and my employer?

Most importantly, why don’t the words just flow? Is it because they aren’t my words? Is the perspective just not my perspective? Are the points I make not not the points I would make? Can such a writing situation ever be successful?

An Attempt and New Effort

After reflecting on why corporate blogging is sometimes so hard, I decided to go about it as if I were writing a post on my own blog. I remembered a discussion I had with a colleague about the difficulty of getting volunteers to produce work. This turns out to be one of the central questions in working with a volunteer community and is an inherent obstacle in nearly every open source effort. I decided to focus on this somewhat controversial issue and write about it.

In thinking about this issue, instead of brainstorming privately, as I would do on my personal blog, I decided to brainstorm collectively. After all, I have 5,000 people in my organization. I can call them all and get various viewpoints. Most of them are just sitting at their desks, in their cubes.

I made a few phone calls. Some weren’t there; others were. They had a lot to say. Suddenly the whole topic started to come alive. I collected viewpoints here and there, and broadened my initial understanding of the topic.

This led to a small epiphany: Whereas on my personal blog, I mainly do the research myself, either by reading or thinking, in a corporate setting I have access to dozens of subject matter experts who can point me in the direction of all kinds of interesting ideas. Perhaps corporate blogging, then, is a bit easier?

By doing about an hour’s worth of research, I had all the information I needed to draft the article. At this point, it became easy. I knew how to structure the information, to divide it with subheadings. I knew just the right length for paragraphs and for the article as a whole. I knew how to weave in other voices, perspectives, and links. All this came natural since I approached it in the same way as a personal blog post.

Do I have any strong personal opinions in the article? Am I putting forward any controversial perspectives? Not really. But I think those dangers are less likely to happen with the community topics I’m writing about, and so they’re not an issue. I might have used “I” and drawn upon personal experiences if appropriate, but it didn’t fit this topic. Yet the article still aligns with what I myself would say.

If you would like to read a draft of the article I wrote (which is still in progress), you can view it here.

—————————–

Image from Flickr

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This honor is bestowed upon long-time technical documentation professional Tom Johnson for creating some of the best — and most innovative — original content about the field of technical communication (and related disciplines) on his ultra-popular blog, I’d Rather Be Writing.

Johnson creates top quality content. It’s thoughtful, well-researched, consistent, and available in a variety of formats. Whether it’s a podcast interview, a book review, a collaborative post, or a how-to article, Johnson does it right. He’s open to new ideas, not afraid of change, and willing to challenge his readers, service providers, and the industry itself to think in new and innovative ways. Always a great read!

It’s cool to receive an award about being innovative. Thanks MindTouch! Over the last several days I’ve been mulling over exactly what it means to be innovative.

Metrics for Innovation

It’s interesting to compare MindTouch’s list of innovators to their list of the most influential technical communicators, published last year. In their influencers list, they carefully spelled out their metrics for measuring influence:

Our Most Influential Blogger (MIB) formula consists of a weighted average across a range of metrics including Alexa, Klout Influence, Google Page Rank, Technorati Authority, and Twitter Followers.

When it comes to innovation, why isn’t there a list of comparable metrics to measure the degree of innovation? Innovation is typically defined as providing new and useful ideas and approaches. But who decides what is new or useful? As such, innovation is harder to evaluate than influence.

The challenge is not without solutions, though. According to Katie Delahaye Paine in Measure What Matters, when it comes to social media, the metric that matters most is relationships. Measuring relationships seems just as tough as measuring innovation. Paine explains that one way you can measure relationships is by having a sample of your audience respond to some standard questions from the Grunig Relationship Survey. Your sample audience would answer whether they agree the following:

• I am happy with this organization.
• Whenever this organization makes an important decision, I know it will be concerned about people like me.
• This organization can be relied on to keep its promises.
• I believe that this organization takes the opinions of people like me into account when making decisions.
• I feel very confident about this organization’s skills. (p.58)

You could score their level of agreement on a scale from 1 to 5, and then use this score for establishing a metric for measuring relationships. (By the way, these questions are only a selection.)

Could we measure innovation by asking similar questions? Here are some questions that I could use to sample my audience.

• Posts on I’d Rather Be Writing often explore ideas I hadn’t considered before.
• After reading I’d Rather Be Writing, it sometimes changes the way I think about what I do.
• I look forward to posts from I’d Rather Be Writing because I know they will present a different spin on topics.
• What I learn from I’d Rather Be Writing makes me a more effective technical communicator.
• The ideas from I’d Rather Be Writing are useful and improve the way I do things.

I could survey a group of people about whether they agree or disagree with these statements, along with maybe 20 other blogs, and then compare the scores. That of course would be time consuming and costly, but it would provide a way to measure innovation.

What I Do That’s Innovative

Whether or not I am actually more innovative in comparison to other technical communicators remains to be proven. However, I have tried a variety of things on my blog: podcasts, screencasts, WordPress training/consulting, videocasts, video interviews, audio interviews, series posts, curation-type posts, book reviews, guest posts, presentation recordings, sponsors posts, collaborative posts, and more.

These are merely formats, though. I like to think that my text posts are where the most innovation happens, because that’s where I challenge assumptions. A good text post gets me thinking hard about a subject, and in writing about it, I often change how I think about it. This is the beauty of writing: it’s a catalyst for thought. Almost every post that explores a topic with depth gets you thinking critically, challenging traditional ideas, uncovering assumptions, and looking from different perspectives.

Last year I wrote a post titled Being Contrarian, in which I spelled out the disagreeing mindset. A couple years ago I pointed out the difference between knowledge posts and creative posts. I favor posts where writers explore an idea rather than just explaining what they already know. Almost all the posts I enjoy writing are creative, contrarian posts. No doubt this is why some see my blog as innovative.

Future Directions: Story

Now that I’ve rambled on about innovation for a while, I want to outline my future directions. Although I’m interested in a lot of different topics (from findability to visual illustration to screencasting to content strategy), what moves me most is story. Story structures everything with meaning and relevance.

By story I don’t mean that I want to tell more workplace stories with increasing transparency. Nor do the stories I tell even need to be anecdotal. At the heart of a story is a conflict that drives action. In an essay, the action is mental action, and the conflict is a question you’re wrestling with. A recent post by Dinah Lenney gets to the core of what I mean. Lenney writes,

Here’s a story about one of those times that made all the difference: I was in the middle of getting my MFA in a low residency program – also, I should add, in the throes of despair about my work – and I went to a reading at a gallery in Santa Monica. At some point in the evening I found myself standing in front of a painting, and beside me was one of my mentors, a fine writer named Jim Krusoe. “How’s the writing?” Jim asked. Come to find out, talking in a gallery is a little like talking in a car; something about not having to look a person in the eye (and this is maybe a bit like writing, too) makes all kinds of confession possible. And so, when Jim asked, “How’s the writing?,” I was honest with him. “What writing? Fuck writing,” I said. “I’m never writing anything again.” Then Jim asked, “What question are you trying to answer?” (Against Knowing)

Lenney goes on to explain that not knowing is what makes writing interesting. When you don’t know, you’re pursuing the answer to some question. You’re wrestling with uncertainty about something. Along the exploration, you stumble across a discovery that is transformative. This basic structure that Lenney describes, wrestling with a question, is story — at least in the nonfiction genre. It’s the essay in the most literal sense of the word, as Montaigne used it, to “try” or “attempt.”

That direction, wrestling with a question, attempting to find answers despite uncertainty, is what drives my writing. It’s what prompts me to explore new directions. I think overall it’s what makes me innovative.

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In the realm of content, an image can play a strong supporting role, as can a design or a video. But text is the lead actor. Text engages readers on a deeper level because text allows you to explore and communicate complex ideas in ways not possible with other mediums. In the world of content, text matters. A lot.

Design as Packaging for Content

Given the power of text, it’s ironic that the interaction designer, or that design, has been so highly esteemed in organizations. Where I work, interaction designers are key players on projects. They are gods, basically. But when designers leave content out of the user experience, as Karen McGrane says in her IA Institute presentation, designers are, for the most part, merely creating packaging around content.

Users aren’t seeking packaging. Users want content. Content is a major part of the user experience, if not the central aspect of the user experience. If you don’t believe this, Karen says, the next time you give a gift to someone, give the person a nice package with nothing in it and look at their reaction.

Karen McGrane says excluding content from the user experience is like giving someone a nice box with no present inside. People don't want packaging -- they want content.

Have web development teams been duped all along about the over-importance of design over content? Content has been marginalized and overshadowed by css and jquery and ajax and image gradients and drop-down menus and all the design aspects around the content. But it’s the content that mainly matters to users, not design. The best strategy for design is to foreground the content, to be invisible so that content is the lead actor in the spotlight of the audience’s attention.

A Collective Delusion

If content matters so much, why don’t we place more importance on it? It seems like the mantra of tech comm for the past 40 years has been, “we do more than write.” I don’t know why we’ve been saying this. Text forms the bulk of most content. Text has the most power to influence and engage users. Writing good text content, particularly for websites, is challenging. Yet we trade our birthright for porridge and try to distance ourselves as much as possible from being classified as “writers.”

By the way, if you haven’t seen Karen’s presentation at the IA Institute, check it out. You’ll be pulled in by the way she debunks this “collective delusion,” as she calls it.

Her main argument is to persuade information architects that content is an integral part of the user experience and can’t be ignored. In all the wireframes and prototypes and designs and other plans for websites, include content. Make it a part of the plan from the beginning. Karen argues,

We as an [information architecture] industry have to stop thinking that our job is making wrappers. Our job is not making templates. Our job is not making buckets that people can put stuff into. Our job is making an experience. And that experience includes figuring out what the content is. So you’re going to start thinking beyond the template. Here’s what you’re going to do …. 1. stop acting like the content isn’t important. If somebody says oh no no no, we’re going to figure out the content later, if someone says user experience includes IA and IXD and Visual Design, call them out on it and say hey, I think content is part of the experience too.

Karen is right to include content in the user experience. How could anyone rationally exclude it? If no one else steps up to the plate to champion content, then the designer should advocate for it, because the designer is crafting the user experience, not just designing sleek-looking prototypes.

(By the way, she isn’t arguing that designers should function as the content strategist on projects, only that they shouldn’t get tricked by clients into thinking content is an unimportant, figure-out-later component. Designers already have enough to handle. Adding responsibility for content to their plates too is impractical.)

Writers as Content Strategists?

Why not put writers in charge of content? From my interactions with writers, writers are analytical thinkers who can assess large chunks of content and see the whole as well as the parts. Writers can create content where its absent; they understand consistency and semantics and connotations. They can read large amounts of content on a website and make connections about organization, structure, and messaging. Writers are thoughtful and strategic. They are content creators, not package makers.

If content serves as the core of site appeal, shouldn’t a content expert play a role in shaping and planning that content? In a response tweet today, Karen agrees. She says, “Tech comm people should be all over CS.”

Content of course includes more than text. It covers video, audio, and images too. But the kingpin of it all is text. Words. And this is the writer’s domain. Rather than trying to move beyond text, maybe we should embrace our strength.

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I know my posts on content strategy had a lot of people disagreeing. First I said content strategy should focus on why help fails. Then I followed that up to say much of content strategy is meaningless semantics. Before that, I said tech writing was misplaced within the context of the English major. Then I argued that academics were just talking with themselves, since they close off access to their publications. An earlier post has me dismissing Google Reader in favor of Paper.li. Another post I wrote scoffs at academics who cling to the term rhetoric, while I simultaneously condemn practitioners for dismissing rhetoric in their work. Another post lists 100 STC unproposals.

The contrarian mentality

I’ve noticed a trend lately. I believe I’m following a contrarian mentality. The general idea is this: If someone agrees with something, disagree. If someone disagrees with something, agree. Or in another light, always try to see the other, non-obvious side of an issue. Question norms and collapse cliches. Offer opinion rather than obviousness. Look for ideas others miss, and try to miss ideas everyone embraces.

Question everything. Be suspicious of tradition. Find the paradox inherent in every truism. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Be plain in the face of complexity. Find complex ideas where others see them as simple. If an idea is widespread, overturn it. If no one believes an idea, show how it serves as the foundation for everything.

Where I learned to be contrarian

I learned to be contrarian as an English major, but I cemented the philosophy as a writing instructor. As an instructor, I constantly shaped student thesis statements with this template: “Although many people believe X, actually Y is the case.”

When you apply this to a topic, it opens up. You stumble into intriguing arguments and ideas not frequently considered. You develop a real thesis, which is an assertion that not everyone by default already believes (otherwise there’s no point in arguing it). A daring thesis is one that nobody believes, but which you can successfully argue and persuade your readers toward. That’s contrarianism in its purist form: “everything you know about topic X is wrong.”

When I read blogs, I’m looking for this contrarian mindset, which usually leads to an interesting thesis/argument. You can see it in posts like In Defense of Lorem Ipsum and Making It Suck. It’s exhilarating to watch an unconventional argument unfold, to find yourself being persuaded towards something new.

Writing an essay often leads you down the path of contrarianism. Writing helps you clarify what you think, and then sharpens your analysis, which then extends your thought, and finally takes you to new, untraveled locations. Often these new locations are the opposite of generally held principles and truths.

Contrarianism against itself

I’ve been praising the contrarian mindset, but by its very nature, it will turn back on itself to argue against its own argument. In this way, it can lead you to jadedness that infects you with constant irritation. When you’re not in control, when you’re listening to a presentation or lesson, or someone is “training” you, it can be impossible to sit still and absorb it without feeling a rebelliousness bubbling.

The critical/contrarian process starts with questions. Some questions lead to more interesting paths than others. This morning I attended a meeting on technical translation. Almost immediately after introducing myself, I found myself launching into question after question after question. I took over the meeting. I wasn’t trying to overturn an idea, but to clarify, to bring to light, to uncover aspects of a fuzzy, unexplained process. I like control, I admit. I want to be the one shaping the direction of the conversation. Selfishly, I want to go in a way that interests me, because otherwise I might end up listening to obvious statements and boring explanations.

I’m not sure how or when I became so contrarian. Nor am I sure it’s good. In many ways it’s part of the writer’s mindset. I don’t want you to agree with everything I write, because then I’m probably writing cliches, or laundry lists with titles like 5 Ways to Move Forward in Your Career, or 7 Tips for Better Screenshots. Almost immediately I want to move to controversy: 5 Ways to Seriously Screw Up Your Career. 7 Tips to Illustrate an Idea Without a Screenshot. The Small Art of Big Manuals. C’mon people, make it interesting.

Spice up your events with a shot of contrarianism

We have an educator panel event coming up in our Intermountain chapter. Initially the event’s description went something like this: a bunch of educators are going to sit around telling you all about their fine programs and how you can enter them. No, no, no, we all said. By we, I mean the Utah bloggers. No one will come to this event. So we changed it a bit, introduced a conflict. Now the description reads more daring: a panel of educators will explain what they’re teaching; practitioners will give feedback about trends in the workplace. If all goes well, the two topics won’t match at all.

Contrarianism leads to conflict

Contrarianism inevitably leads to a conflict, but in a good way. Conflict is an essential ingredient to writing because where there is conflict, there is story. The more you wrestle with conflict, the better the story. And story is what makes our lives meaningful. It’s what makes life interesting, anyway, so naturally it’s the direction in which we gravitate.

This all goes to say, don’t always take me so seriously. I will support an argument on my blog as much as I will tear it down. I hope you disagree with me as frequently as you agree with me. It’s my brainwashed nature to be contrarian, I suppose. I will give you more opinion than information, because we are drowning in information. By arguing the unconventional, I’ll come around to a different point of view, a more interesting, unexplored one. The day everyone agrees with everything I write, I will stop writing.

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I would add that the same principle applies to writing. Each word you add to a sentence removes some of the focus from the other words. Sometimes the best way to increase a sentence’s emphasis is by simplifying the sentence and removing content around it.

To read Gerry’s article, see Web manager: Top tasks versus tiny tasks.

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• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
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Blog Sponsors

• 3Rabbitz book
• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree