New article in Simplifying Complexity: Reconstructing the absent user
Here’s a brief summary of the article:
To write good documentation, you have to follow the most fundamental rule of writing: know your reader. The problem in tech comm is that the reader (or “user”) is absent, and there aren’t any direct measurable outcomes when users interact with the documentation. Consequently, tech writers suffer from lack of user knowledge and feedback, which cripples the ability to write good documentation.
Writing good documentation requires you to reconstruct the absent user through a number of techniques — web analytics, embedded surveys, milestone completions, support tickets, satisfaction surveys, and more. It is an iterative process where layers of information get added little by little to form an image of the user, like a 3D printer slowly building a face. By acquiring and analyzing this user knowledge, you can start to create documentation that meets user’s needs. This user knowledge, though mostly qualitative, provides the best measure for documentation.
Read more here: Reconstructing the absent user – the essential requirement for writing good documentation.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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