TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS: KEY POINTS

1. Users
Difference between a user and an audience.
Who are your users?
What do you know about their skills, their background knowledge, their demographics?
How can you find out more about your users? Why might you want to?
2. Goals
What are your users goals?
Primary, secondary, tertiary?
How can you help different types of users achieve their different goals efficiently?
Think RAM: Random Access MemoryThink dual stream reading. Can I jump in anywhere?
3. Stakeholders
Beyond your users, who else has a stake in you being successful at the document you are creating?
The difference between a client and their users/customers.
4. KPIs: Key Performance Indicators
Before you start creating a document (or any project) for someone, set Key Performance Indicators.
Markers that show that you have been successful at your work and that show the client when you
are done.
5. SMEs: Subject Matter Experts
Who can you gather information from in order to make you texts in the best manner possible?
6. Textual Tests
How can you test that your document makes sense and is useful.
 INSTRUCTIONS: FORMAL PARTS
1. Intro and Background
What will these instructions help me do?
Is there anything I need to know beforehand to be able to use these instructions effectively?
Includes subject, purpose of procedure, intended readers, scope (what I do and do not cover), organization, conventions,
motivation, and safety.
2. List of Materials
Before she begins to follow the set of instructions, is there certain materials or information that your reader needs to collect? In
order to do an experiment, for instance, your reader will have to collect materials and know some background knowledgeare
there special things to pay attention to/collect while performing the experiment?
Where do I gather materials from?
Are there tools I need? What are they and what do they look like?
3. List of Steps and Sub-steps
Once Im ready to start, what exactly do I do?
Written for scanning, rapid comprehension, action-oriented headings, branching steps clearly represented, notes on what might go
wrong on specific steps.
Ideally every step has an image involved.
Tips and warnings should be included.
Steps should teach not only what to do but also why to do it in this way.
Steps should include feedback: how do I know Ive done this step right or wrong?
Timing on steps and sub-steps. How fast or slow? What other measurements are involved?
4. Trouble Shooting
Something isnt working correctly. What do you predict it is and how do I fix it?
5. Glossary of Key Terms
Key terms that you might have to use that I might not know.
Key websites and other sources of information that might prove useful.
INSTRUCTIONS: STEPS TO WRITING
1. Users: Consider who they are, what their goals are, and KPIs. Make a user
persona.
2. Prewrite: Write down the steps as you think they should occur off the top of your
head.
3. Process Analysis: Perform the process yourself and add to your notes.
4. SME: Interview subject matter experts (other people who have done the process)
and ask them questions about tips, tricks, and where problems have occurred for
them in the past. Make an empathy map based on these interviews.
5. Get into more detailed instructionsthinking of every small detail. Think about
how you might group steps and substeps, create a visual hierarchy, use numbers,
bullets, and headings.
6. Add visuals that document particularly tricks steps, label interworking pieces,
break down parts, or summarize data/steps.
7. Create the other parts of documentation surrounding the actual instructions list
8. Test your instructions by having someone who hasnt done the process follow
them.
FINISH LEGOS ACTIVITY
Each group choose a representative
Each representative meet at the front of the room and exchange emails with
another person.
Email that other person your instruction set.
Write a formal lettercover letter formatdated and signedin which you evaluate
the usability of these instruction sets.
What was difficult and easy?
What was smart and dumb?
What needs immediate change?
WHATS WRONG WITH THESE?
THE POSTMODERN SPACE OF OPERATORS
MANUALS
1. User-Centered Design: design that starts with the user, identifying a problem that needs
to be addressed, and then working with a community to gather resources to create a
solution.
2. Modernism: Technical instructions/writing is all about clear language, steps, and
grammar. Technical manuals explain how to do something.
3. Postmodernism: Contextualizetechnical writing should change depending on our
understanding of the user and context.
How might the context of use change your instructions?
Technical manuals should help users understand what is going on, why it is
happening, how devices function: technical writing (like all writing) as the
communication of understanding rather than the transfer of information.
Plan for a variety of users from international audiences.
Plan for updating.
4. Denaturalize Common Sense: Education on understanding. Making understand the
concepts before you run through the steps.
In the section on cleaning the machine, the announcer tells users to follow their incli-
nations and not be obsessive: You could attempt to clean the ma- chine right away,
but its too hard. Put it aside and go out for the evening. Once the dough has dried, its
a snap to clean.
5. Take Ones Share of the Responsibility: Active text for learning. Make users consider
what they are actually doing and how it may be similar or different than the manual.
 THE DILEMMAS OF MAKER
CULTURE
What is the Maker Movement and how is it
changing science and technology?
What is a 3-D printer and why does it
matter? (3-D print organs and guns)
What is repair culture and how do we design
for it?