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Technical & Business Writing

(ENG-715)
Shaukat Ali Khan
UIIT, Rawalpindi
Outline
1. Introduction to the Course
1. Course Objectives
2. Organization of the Course
2. Understanding Task Orientation
3. Summary
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Introduction to the Course
Technical & Business Writing
ENG-715
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Course Objectives
This course equip the students with such writing
skills that are interested in
Finding practical step to help them start and
complete project successfully
Exploring ideas behind software
documentation as a discipline and as a
profession
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Organization of the Course
Part-1
provides the concept of task orientation and
the forms of Software Documentation such as
Tutorials, procedures and references etc.
Part-2
Describes the processes of software
documentation
Part-3
Tools of software documentation
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Understanding Task
Orientation
Lecture: 1

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Understanding Task Orientation
Chapter Objectives
Helps the software documentation writer to
achieve the following goals
Encourage users to learn the program (proficiency)
Encourage users to apply the program to problem
in workplace (efficiency)

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Understanding Task Orientation
Continue)
Software Documentation:
A form of writing, for both print and online
media that supports the efficient and effective
use of software in its intended environment
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Understanding Task Orientation
Continue)
Task Orientation:
An approach to software documentation that
presents information in chronological order
based on the user s workplace sequences

A design strategy for software documentation
that attempts to increase user knowledge of
an application program by integrating the
software with users work environment

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Understanding Task Orientation
Continue)
Task Orientation encourages the successful
application of software to workplace objectives
This approach to documentation is shown in
variety of print and online forms:
Tutorials
Getting started booklets
Manuals
Instruction steps
Online help procedures
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Understanding Task Orientation
Continue)
Strategies that encourages task orientation
Emphasize problem solving
Provide task oriented organizations
Encourage user control of information
Orient page semantically
Facilitate both routines and complex tasks
Design for users
Facilitate communication tasks
Encourage user communities
Support cognitive processing
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Emphasize Problem Solving
The manual should help the users to solve
problems in workspace
The problems may be kind of:
How can I organize the project
Where can I get the peak intensity of data
The introductory paragraphs that preview not
only the steps to follow, but the goal and
objectives of their software work
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Provide Task Oriented Organization
The manual must be organized in way
That matches the kind of tasks a user will perform.
Logical sequence is more important than alphabetical
sequence.
example is word processing
Task oriented arrangement begins in the table of
contents of your manual
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Encourage User Control of
Information
Feelings among software users, that they decide
what the program does for them
The manual should show the user that how they
make key decisions, supply key information or
determine key program output
e.g. specifying what a database program will search
for and identifying which data the program will process
User need to feel in control of the program

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Encourage User Control of
Information (Continue)
Cross reference in manual and hyperlinks in
online system can help to maintain the user
sense of control over the document
This allow the users to go anywhere for the search of
additional information
Chapter 3: Writing to Guide Procedures will discuss
this strategy
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Organize Pages Semantically
Arrange the elements of the page meaningfully
according to the users job requirement needs
One of the best way to orient pages semantically
employs visual and graphics to balance text in
complementary way
This makes the user to understand and perform
the job in better way
Chapter 11: Laying out Pages and Screens will
describe this strategy
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Facilitate both Routine and Complex
Tasks
The manual has ability to represent both routine
and complex task
Routine tasks
Repeated tasks that easily represents the
conventional procedures
e.g. save file, open file, delete record etc
Complex tasks
These task required user knowledge to apply that
comes from experience
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Facilitate both Routine and Complex
Tasks (Continue)
Complex Tasks
e.g. using a spreadsheet software to calculate
their salaries and identify their performance in
annual reports
If the manual helps the user to perform complex
task, it will be valued more by the user
This strategy will be utilized in chapter 5:
Analyze your Users
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Design for Users
The organization of manual comes from user
needs instead of models and templates
The user driven manual should allow users to:
Find what they need
Understand what they find
Use what the understand appropriately
Chapter 5: Analyzing your users and Chapter 8:
Conducting Usability Tests will adopt this
strategy
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Facilitate Communication Tasks
User of software program required them to
communicate about their work
These are called communication tasks because
they depend on users workplace demand.
e.g. print functions, report functions, and data transfer
functions etc. supports communications tasks
The manual should facilitate the users to learn
and apply the communication task
Chapter 12: Getting the Language right will uses
this strategy
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Encourage User Communities
Users often need encouragement to rely on
other users of the program, their user groups
Task oriented documentations encourages
users to identify and get help from others
Other users of the program (not experts) can
render valuable help because they understand
the users job demand
Chapter 5: Analyze your users and Chapter 6:
Planning an Writing your document will use this
strategy
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Support Cognitive Processing
People use mental model called cognitive
schema, that help them learn, process and apply
the new information that comes at them at
alarmingly faster and faster rate
The task oriented manual uses principles of
knowledge representation and analogy to
convey software features and applications to
workplace tasks
These techniques are applied by writing the
references
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Summary
Any Questions?