The Not-Boring Tech Writer - Skill #4: Understanding UX Design

Skill #4: Understanding UX Design

05/16/16 • 25 min

Where should user experience (UX) design fit in the technical writer’s toolbox?

Well, think about how your users experience your documentation:
Are they following a workflow path, following a series of pages to complete a series of tasks sequentially?

Are they following nav links, jumping around to find task-specific information?

Understanding how your users experience your documentation is understanding UX design – which can make or break your docs’ usability.

As our guest and UX designer Autumn Hood describes it: “You can’t have good technical communication without good UX design.”

In this episode, you’ll learn how to think like a UX designer so you can create an effective documentation experience for your users.

The Show Notes:

Where should user experience (UX) design fit in the technical writer’s toolbox?

Well, think about how your users experience your documentation:
Are they following a workflow path, following a series of pages to complete a series of tasks sequentially?

Are they following nav links, jumping around to find task-specific information?

Understanding how your users experience your documentation is understanding UX design – which can make or break your docs’ usability.

As our guest and UX designer Autumn Hood describes it: “You can’t have good technical communication without good UX design.”

In this episode, you’ll learn how to think like a UX designer so you can create an effective documentation experience for your users.

The Show Notes:

Previous Episode

Skill #3: Creating Just-in-Time Documentation

Face it: sometimes, documenting software can be tricky.

Not because we don’t understand the software – we get that. Nor because we can’t articulate it in layman’s terms – we’ve got that covered, too.

But because feature guides – the traditional style of software documentation – isn’t enough to ensure your end users can find the information they need to accomplish a specific task.

Enter just-in-time documentation: a new methodology of documentation that complements feature guides by creating task-oriented documents, as our guest Bri Hillmer describes it, “just in time, when the customer asks the question.”

In this episode, you’ll learn about the power of just-in-time documentation and how you can apply it to your documentation today.

The Show Notes:

Next Episode

Skill #5: Getting Involved in a Community

We’ve all experienced the joy of community: colleagues mentor you; friends encourage you; strangers point you towards their favorite pizza shop downtown.

For that moment, whether you had previous ties to each other or not, you feel that sense of community.

And while every community is unique, one concept is constant: As urbanist Charles Montgomery defines it, “people gathering, talking, and helping one another everyday.”

Eric Holscher (today’s podcast guest) and Troy Howard have captured that concept and created a community for us – the tech writers.

The community: Write the Docs.

In this episode, Eric shares the story of Write the Docs and describes the power of getting involved in a community, including: