Foul Writer’s World

Why still produce manuals and user guides? This is a question I’m beginning to ask myself more and more. People I have spoken to all freely admit to never reading the manual. I myself, rarely read through a manual. So why do I bother? The truth is, I bother because of the 1 person in every 10, ok a 100, which emails back or leaves a comment thanking me for the documentation I produced because it got them out of a sticky situation or improved their own performance. These are the people I still write for, but they are a dying breed.

Granted, I still see the importance for producing written material. Particularly for Knowledge Bases and Troubleshooting. But I find myself increasingly more interested in the technologies behind technical communication rather than the writing itself. I like the idea of new media supplementing the written documents, the use of wikis to give the users a voice, blogs to keep the world informed. Podcasts or Screencasts to guide new users through the features.

I am particularly interested in interactive manuals, because I believe people learn and remember better when they get stuck in. I’m busy developing a new framework for the organization where I work, trying to fit interactive manuals in to a formal structure that will allow for greater reuse. In previous projects where I have attempted to create interactive manuals they have only been partially successful because of time to market.I am hoping with this new framework I can create completely reusable content that will allow me to produce a greater range of interactive manuals, while reducing the time to market for each.

My main tools for doing this are Adobe Captivate and Flash. I also have Mimic 1 but I am not a fan of the MadCap application, although that may change with the release of Mimic 2.

I intend to create “movie clips” that are independent of one another. Which can then, using something similar to DITA’s mapping practices, be used to create a TOC that will link the required movie clips together. What I’m hoping is that to and end user it will seem like one complete movie, full of interactive and learning elements that they will enjoy using and find useful.

At the end of the day I am hoping to come up with something similar to what Microsoft have done with the online training they have produced for Office 2007. To see an example check out the link below:

Microsoft Interactive Guides for Office 2007

I’ll let you know how I progress.

Has anyone got any tips, advice or any other examples?

Tom Johnson recently wrote an interesting article about “Why Software Applications Need Product Blogs, and Why They Don’t Get Them”. While I completely agree with his sentiments I also believe that instead of blogging a good resource for the proliferation of knowledge, whether for a product or company, can also be done entirely using a wiki type tool. Wikiing, for want of a better term, can in essence be very much like blogging and in fact most wiki applications include a blogging option.

At the organisation where I work we use an internal wiki, where the various product development teams update wiki pages relating to the application and often branch these pages to include theoretical and design concepts. The wiki is used by staff, management and various outsourced resources to discuss possible issues relating to the product development. The wiki allows our organisation to communicate effectively and ensures that everyone remain in the loop. Most importantly it creates a resource that is easy to search and is recorded for all to see.

Interestingly the wiki application we use (wikispaces) also allows blogs to be created and various teams (marketing, IT, customer services) and people (CEO, Product Manager) have all created blogs to help others within the organisation to better understand their work and routines.

Unlike blogs where the only sensible method of viewing and staying up to date with them requires a “feed reader” or aggregator, the wiki pages created can be monitored and emails sent automatically when someone edits the page. This is extremely useful when your work relies heavily on specific information. In my case, progress and development ideas for products I am documenting automatically arrive in my email, without me needing to go and find out for myself it also ensures that I am aware of any changes that may have occurred to previously decided concepts.