My friend and STC colleague, Steve Jong, has written an excellent piece for this month’s STC Intercom magazine that’s definitely worth read.
As I’m about to start on my new gig soon (red tape holding it up right now), this is a topic that’s been very much on my mind, so the timeliness of the article is great. I like how Steve has broken it down based on the audience types and their needs. After all, it’s practically the mantra of all technical communicators to ask, “Who’s the audience?” so that we can cater our work appropriately. One always hears about the “faster, better, cheaper” of documentation, but Steve breaks it down on how that can actually work based on setting realistic goals based on your audience without losing quality in the process. I know that’s a goal of mine going into any project that I do!
As this article is openly available, I urge you to take a look, and really savor the information. I think it will either reinforce what you might instinctively know as a technical communicator, or it will clue you in to some things that you might not have thought about.
See the link below, and let me know what you think in the comments.
A Framework for Thinking about Documentation Quality
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About TechCommGeekMom
Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently consults for Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
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Thanks for the pointer to Steve’s article. I admire his insight in classifying documentation quality by three sets of stakeholders: customers, clients, and communicators. Not only do we have different audiences for our content: it turns out we have different audiences for our quality criteria too.