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.
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