Single-Sourcing

After reading Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s article, “A Work in Progress,” one insight about single-sourcing and document review processes that I found interesting was that a technical writer relies on and collaborates with many individuals to accomplish tasks for an organization. When I tell people that my career goal is to be a technical writer, many of them think of the stereotypical writer who sits in a quiet room by himself writing all day. In reality, the technical writer has a collaborative or a social role for a business. Breuch states in her article that “in a single source environment, technical writers must negotiate social tensions and conflict as they work with others to create single source documents” (Breuch 344). This is an important point because technical writers do not spend most of their time writing up documents. Most of a technical writer’s time is spent interacting with other individuals. With the help of many individuals working on the same project, the process can become more efficient, and the documentation will be much cleaner and more easily readable for a nontechnical audience. Thus, Breuch points out at the end of her article that by adapting and making the transition to single-source environments, “technical writers can take a proactive role in shaping their emerging roles as collaborators and project managers” (Breuch 354). In other words, by working with people like engineers, subject matter experts, and other writers, technical communicators not only improve key future relationships, but also, they can show their significant value to a business.

Another significant insight about single-sourcing that I learned from the article was that it is much more beneficial for an organization to have each writer write small chunks on a specific topic or aspect of the document. Instead of having one writer compose the entire document or manual describing every single function for a product, it would be more efficient and helpful if writers break up the document into smaller sections. In this way, each writer can become a more knowledgeable technical expert about a specific aspect or function of a product. Breuch mentions in her case study that one writer likes working in a team environment to construct a document because “for each topic she writes, she has a deeper appreciation for the content” (Breuch 350). This is a crucial idea for the field of technical communication because working in teams allows individuals to learn as much as they can about one function of a product rather than having to take the time to learn about the entire product on their own. Plus, single-sourcing makes the document review process more efficient because according to Breuch, “the smaller chunks of text lead to greater scrutiny and increased feedback from reviewers” (Breuch 345). Hence, reviewers can be more efficient by spending more time critiquing and analyzing one small part of a document instead of giving minimal feedback on the entire manual.

Overall, Breuch makes some important points in her article about the present and future of technical communication. In general, the work of a technical communicator is gradually transitioning toward single-sourcing environments where technical communicators are emerging as significant contributors to a team and a business.

Information Architecture and Designing for the Web

It is important to not only write useful content for print documents, but it is becoming increasingly important to know how to design and present information for the web. Janice C. Redish in her article, “Letting Go of the Words,” states that to make web content more usable, it is important to “write for scanning. Write so that users can grab the information and move on” (Redish 9). I agree with what Redish says about writing for the web. I prefer not to be on the web for long periods of time. If I am looking up information on a website, and it takes me longer than five or six minutes to find what I need, I move on to a different website. Thus, technical communicators must adapt to writing for a web audience because Redish argues that “what does not work well on paper will be impossible to use on the Web” (Redish 8). I think this is a very interesting point by Redish because I think it is more important that technical communicators learn that writing for the web involves understanding an entirely new audience than understanding an audience for writing print documents. People who search for information on the web are going to be more selective with the information they choose to use. In addition, these people know they have multiple websites to search from to find the same information, and they do not want to spend a great deal of time looking for it. What I learned from Redish’s article about designing for the web is that technical communicators need to “get out of prose mode; think visually” (Redish 9). In other words, in order to present usable technical documentation for a website, a technical communicator must learn that users expect information to be right at their fingertips in a clear, chunk-like manner.

One interesting thing I learned from reading Andrea L. Ames and Michelle Corbin’s article, “Information Architecture,” was that information design and information architecture are two different processes, but they work together to establish the ultimate user experience. As stated by Ames and Corbin in their article, “the role of information architect in the context of technical communication is quickly evolving to a role where organization, structure, classification, and metadata are relegated to being the tools used by the architect to create an information user experience” (Ames and Corbin 13). I thought this was an interesting insight because the role of the technical communicator is not just to write information manuals or user guides. Technical communicators have to play many roles to not only write the information, but to make it readable. The technical communicator has to be a part of the writing process as well as the design process to create and present information that will be useful. Ames and Corbin point out in their article that “the importance of the usability of that information and how well it integrates into the Web site or product of which it is a part begins to enjoy equal priority with the interaction design and visual design” (Ames and Corbin 13). I think Ames and Corbin make a valid argument because technical communicators can write really good content about a topic, and they can make a web site look very pretty. However, if the technical communicator does not know how to fit that content into the website in a way that will make sense for the person reading it, the website will not be effective, and the user will quickly find his information elsewhere. I learned from this article that the designing of the website and the content alone should not be the main focus. The information design and architecture of a website will be most helpful for a user if technical communicators focus on what they do well: create a helpful user experience.

Information and Visual Design

I think visual design and rhetoric will play increasing roles in the future of technical communication. Charles Kosteinick in his article, “The Rhetoric of Text Design in Professional Communication,” makes it clear that “while we adapt to the new technology, we need to assimilate visual language into our understanding of the communication process” (Kosteinick 189). This is a significant point by Kosteinick because with the increase in technology, there is going to be more complex information, and this information needs to be effectively communicated to specific audiences. Written text by itself will not always be sufficient in the communication process. Visual design is another critical tool in the toolbox that technical writers have to adapt to and take advantage of to better communicate complex material. Communication is not just about putting sentences together in a document. The presentation of the information must be effective.

Also, I think understanding visual and information design is a huge asset for a technical writer because visuals are universal. For the most part, visuals are understood on a global level. Illustrations on how to do something in an instruction manual can reach a much bigger audience than a text-only manual. In his article, “The Successes and Challenges of Visual Language,” Patrick Hofmann states that “with the dissolution of borders comes a need to communicate globally” (Hofmann 16). To communicate globally, part of a technical writer’s job is to take the time to put together effective visuals because according to Hofmann, “the main focus for creating wordless manuals was to save money, while maintaining a positive experience for the user” (Hofmann 17).  This is a key point in Hofmann’s article because I know when I read a set of instructions I try to figure out how something works first by looking at the pictures before I read the text. Sometimes, I skip reading the text all together. Visuals not only save organizations money in creating manuals, but more important, they save users time. In order to “maintain a positive experience for the user,” technical writers must realize that most people do not have the time to sit down and read an entire manual. Thus, Janice Redish makes an excellent point in her article, “What is Information Design?,” that “we are all going to need to understand both information and design and how they relate to each other even more in the future” (Redish 165). Incorporating visual design with the technical information will definitely make the user experience more enjoyable if technical writers take a considerate amount of time refining the visual aspects of their work.

I think it is important that technical writers do not underestimate the significance of visual rhetoric when writing because according to Kosteinick in his article, “whether visual language serves structural or stylistic functions, its rhetorical effect derives not only from intrinsic value qualities but from the reader’s previous perceptual experiences” (Kosteinick 200). This is an important concept by Kosteinick because readers have expectations about visuals in specific situations. Technical writers have to purposefully use visuals; otherwise interpreting visuals by the reader will be difficult. I agree with Hofmann when he says that “we devote an incredible amount of time to ensuring that our words effectively address their audience. We should do the same with our pictures” (Hofmann 18). Despite the challenges of producing visuals, utilizing visual design will play a big part in defining technical communication.

What does it mean to understand "audience"?

In the technical communication field, it is essential to know what it means to understand audience in any given situation. Understanding an audience means to be able to continuously adapt to the audience’s needs in order to create effective documentation that will better connect writers and readers in a variety of situations. Understanding audience means being adaptable and flexible to the changing qualities of audience members within a changing field of communication.

Understanding audience makes communication more effective for technical writers because it creates a special relationship between writers and their readers. In her article, “How to Know Your Audience,” Heather Lazzaro suggests that before doing anything, as a technical writer, you “should do enough research to know your user as if he or she were your best friend” (Lazzaro 1). Lazzaro makes an important point because if technical writers do not understand their audiences, users of technical documents will not get the appropriate information. When these users do not get the right information, communication is lost, and the document becomes useless. To understand “audience,” it is critical to note that if technical writers do not take the time to do a thorough audience analysis beforehand, the users of the information will think the writers are lazy in their attempts to communicate. Heather Lazzaro emphasizes the importance of understanding audience by stating that you should always “‘ask’ users for their opinions, and be willing to change your product based on the results” (Lazzaro 3). Lazzaro makes an interesting statement because by taking in the consideration of what an audience is thinking, technical writers can easily adapt to create the most user-friendly content that is possible.

Understanding audience is important in any industry because technical writers will have to effectively write grants in order to fund research. The process of writing a grant is about persuading an audience or agency to give funding. It is important for grant writers to know who their funding agency is. According to Christine M. Tardy in her article, “A Genre System View of the Funding of Academic Research,” “one essential aspect of genre knowledge is understanding the needs and mission of the funding agency” (Tardy 17). The audience that a grant writer must understand is the agency. If this writer cannot understand the characteristics of this audience, there is very little chance that he or she will be successful in drafting a proposal. Grant writing is all about persuasion. By adapting and being flexible to the funding agency, the agency, in a way, can give grant writers credibility. This credibility is important because according to Tardy in her article, grant writing involves “various social interactions that take place within multiple discourse communities” (Tardy 25). This is a significant idea by Tardy because grant writers must know what it means to understand audience because they must interact with many groups like funding agencies, government, and program officers to propose grants and write documents.

 If grant writers can understand audience and adapt to their needs, they will quickly gain credibility in their work and be successful writing grants and other important documents given any rhetorical situation.

Usability Testing

Before reading the two articles, I did not have much background knowledge about usability testing.  The most interesting piece of information I learned was that a technical writer has many of the skills required to be a usability specialist. In his article, “Career Development: Filling the Usability Gap,” Ted Brooks explains that “a usability specialist designs, or influences the design of, user interfaces. The user interface consists of all of the ways that a user interacts with a product” (Brooks 181). I found this description of a usability specialist quite interesting because the job of a usability specialist definitely overlaps with the job of a technical writer. Both usability specialists and technical writers design and test user content in a way that communicates information to nontechnical audiences. Brooks points out in his article the similarity of usability testing and technical writing by saying that “technical communicators have always been conscious of users’ needs; users are their audience” (Brooks 182). This is a significant observation because it shows that the field of technical communication is not just a field about technical writing. Technical communication is a broad area of study that allows new technical writing students to adapt their skills to a variety of career options, including usability testing.

In addition, the one idea that interests me most about usability testing is that it gives the technical writer a new way of experimenting with the product. It allows technical writers to become more customer-oriented in their approach for designing and writing documents and user interfaces. In their article, “Incorporating Usability Testing into the Documentation Process,” Christi-Anne Postava-Davignon et al. explain that the writers on the Documentation Usability Team had reconsidered “their previously held assumptions about what users read and in what order, what attracts attention and what does not, and what kind of information users want” (Postava-Davignon et al. 36). This is a critical idea because it is the job of technical writers to be user-oriented, and sometimes, technical writers do not always communicate effectively to readers because they do not always see their point of view. Postava-Davignon et al. make it clear that “the best way to learn about the usability of documentation is to watch people consult the documentation in the process of performing realistic tasks that are as close as possible to what users actually do” (Postava-Davignon et al. 39). The key words are “realistic tasks” because usability testing allows a team to recreate a user interface step by step, so the technical writer can incorporate it into a document. It allows technical writers to become more aware of what and how they write because it gives them an additional technique to resolve issues by experimenting with a product to create a user interface, especially since it adds credibility to a technical writer’s work. According to Brooks, usability testing is very significant because the people who buy the product “want something beyond your assurance that yes, the product is indeed usable” (Brooks 183).

           

I think Postava-Davignon et al. sum up the importance of usability testing in the technical communication field when they say that “the use of real-world tasks ensures that observations made during testing reflect issues with many aspects of our products” (Postava-Davignon et al. 42). It gives technical writers a new way to interact with products in a way that will help them reach their goals of planning, testing, and designing documents that fit the needs of the readers.

Technical Writing in Trans-Cultural Contexts

As stated by Yiqin Wang and Dan Wang in their article, “Cultural Contexts in Technical Communication,” “there are cultural differences in terms of high and low contexts, in language, and in thought patterns” (Wang and Wang 48). This is a very important point because technical writing is not just significant in the United States, but it is also a crucial field all over the world as many audiences from different cultures continue to need the work of technical writers. Even within the United States, there are many cultures represented. So, as a beginning technical writer, it is central that I explore technical communication in a broader, worldly view to advance my training in global communication.

The best way for me to prepare for my career as a technical writer in a trans-cultural context is through my education. My college of liberal arts degree will make me better able to adapt to the technical needs of different cultures when I am constructing technical documents. In contrast to the liberal arts degree, an engineer, for example, in the college of science and engineering may not get much training for working in a global environment.

Becoming more culturally aware will definitely help me in my career because according to Nicole St. Germaine-Madison in her article, “Localizing Medical Information for U.S. Spanish-Speakers,” “different cultures have different rhetoric preferences” (St. Germaine-Madison 236). With the increasing diversity inside and outside the workplace, it is critical for me as an effective technical writer to learn these different rhetoric preferences like structure, terminology, and graphics. When I understand these preferences in technical documents, I will be better equipped to adapt to diverse audiences by making relevant information that is fitting for many cultures.

Another good way that is helping my career as a trans-cultural technical communicator is learning a second language. By learning a second language, I have been able to learn speaking and writing preferences for the Hispanic culture. By understanding different aspects of the Hispanic culture, I have relevant experience that will help me adapt to the preferences of the Hispanic population because according to St-Germaine-Madison in her article, “the rapid growth of this population indicates that technical communicators will need to increase their efforts to address this population in terms of its rhetorical preferences” (St. Germaine-Madison 235). However, Wang and Wang make a necessary point in their article stating that I cannot “assume that any organized approach adopted by one culture in representing technical information can be adopted easily by another” (Wang and Wang 48). Thus, it is essential to engage and interact with many cultures and groups of people.

There will always be a need for technical writers to communicate information. More important, there will be a bigger demand for technical writers with experience in working as global communicators who understand the preferences and the cultural dimensions of diverse population groups.

What is Technical Communication?

Technical communication is a long, difficult process that a technical communicator must go through to help clarify and explain complex material to nontechnical audiences. It is a writing process that can be difficult to define because the world is constantly changing with advancements in technology. According to Frederick M. O’Hara, Jr. in his article, A Brief History of Technical Communication, technical communication has seen drastic transformations from its early history until now, and there is belief that there will be quick changes in this profession in the near future (O’Hara 4). I think the hard part of defining technical communication is not figuring out what is technical communication, but it is figuring out what it is not. As stated by Jo Allen in The Case Against Defining Technical Communication, deciding what is and what is not technical communication can be challenging because “definitions draw lines: This is and that isn’t”(Allen 74). This statement is important because by defining technical communication, there is always the possibility of something getting excluded from the definition like cookbooks. Before reading the articles by O’Hara and Allen, I thought technical communication had an unchanging, specific definition with a relatively young history. After reading through the article by Allen, I agree with Allen when he states at the end of his article that he thinks “the definition will not be a handy one- or two-sentence catch-all” (Allen 75). This statement by Allen is important because there are many aspects of technical communication that I have not thought of before like clarity and style, and all of these aspects play important roles in technical communication. I think since there are so many different components of technical communication, there is going to be a lot of disagreement about what is classified as technical writing. If technical communicators can start agreeing on what is not technical communication, then I think it might be easier to define what technical communication actually is. Jo Allen argues in his article that the challenge of defining technical communication is that previous definitions focus “on a single aspect of technical writing, using this aspect as the basis for distinguishing technical writing from all other genres of writing” (Allen 69).  There is no one correct way to define technical communication. It is a special type of writing with its own special process, but it is a process that is continually changing and adapting to new technologies. Technical communication has no clear cut definition, but if I were to try to define it, I would define it as a creative process that constantly changes. This process is used to help explain a complex world, and the process is used to transform this technical language into nontechnical language. Based on my definition, some examples of technical communication might be car repair manuals, user manuals for electronics, reference guides, and online help files.

Inspire

When I write (whether it be technical writing, journal writing, tweeting, blogging, or any other type of writing), I write with one purpose or goal in mind. The purpose of my writing is to inspire whoever may read the content I put together on paper or on a screen. For example, by writing an instruction manual for a specific product, I want to inspire the readers so that they can use the product easily, effectively, and efficiently. When I write a blog article, I write to inspire my readers to think about many topics in different ways than they previously thought about those topics before reading my blog. In other words, being a good writer means keeping the audience in mind at all times during the writing process. In order to be a good writer, a good writer has to understand one important thing:  the audience determines the meaning of what the writer produces. As a writer, the meaning of writing does not depend on my interpretations so much, but rather, writing is audience-focused and user-centered. The ultimate question that every writer, including myself, must answer before starting any writing project is who is/are my audience/readers? Thus, I chose the word, “Inspire,” as the third word in my tagline because writing is all about who reads my writing, and when I write, I get my inspiration, ideas, and content from my reader or my hypothetical readers. That is why I have a blog  where I can interact with my readers, where I can get feedback from my readers, where readers can critique my writing projects, and where I can get diverse ideas to improve my writing and writing projects.

Know

Knowledge is power. This phrase can have many meanings, and as a writer, it is a phrase I live by. I believe that the key to being a great writer of any kind is to have a desire to search out the many truths in this world and to have a passion to know more. The search for truth and knowledge is infinite. Writing is the perfect way to obtain knowledge about the world, about the self, and about each other. As a technical writer, I have a desire to become knowledgeable about the field of technical communications and become knowledgeable about who I am writing for and what I am writing about to help other people understand a product, device, or software, which is why I pursued a degree in Technical Communications. Or, as a writer of music, I gain knowledge about myself by uncovering who I am through my music. In general, writing gives me a platform to uncover the many truths about myself and the world I live in, and it gives me an opportunity for people to know me even more.

Write

Writing is my passion in life. It is what I enjoy doing from the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep: blogging, tweeting, journaling, or composing music. This passion began when I started playing piano when I was seven years old and began writing my own music shortly after. I have written several piano compositions and have shared them with others. Writing music encourages me to write more each day and to develop my writing skills as I gain knowledge and experience with the written word and as I share my writing with people I know. Writing has a long, interesting, and unique history. Even though I am living in a tiny fraction of that history, I am excited to see where writing will take me now and in the future. Specifically, I am excited to see how writing handles the problems and challenges of science and technology in the future, and I am prepared to explore these problems and challenges of technology wherever I go.