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Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2003
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Tech Writing by Design
By Peggy J. Heath
Getting to Know Your Common User
How to create valuable, compelling, and empowering information and experiences for others.
This was the charge we set for ourselves in the last article of this series (TechWriting as Information Design, The Willamette Galley, Volume 5, Issue 4, July 2002), as we explored some of the ideas of Nathan Shedroff, experience designer.
As good Shedroff disciples, we came to view data as fairly worthless and not an adequate product for communication until it is transformed and presented in a context where relationships are established. We identified ourselves, the technical writers, as creators of the context that transforms data into meaningful information through manuals, reports, white papers, or a basic set of instructions, and tagged information designers as those who evaluate the different ways the resulting information will be experienced by the user.
As we continue to explore the common ground between technical writers and information designers, the distinctions between the two will become even less obvious or necessary. And when it comes to the subject of this month’s inquiry, the user, the differences flatline.
So…What Does a User Want?
Regardless of the discipline, anyone communicating anything to anybody will choose the words to use, the circumstances under which to use them, and the format to convey the information by first considering the end user or recipient of that information. More specific to task-oriented information—that which instructs the user in completing a task—it’s the end user’s goals that first must be understood before a technical writer can effectively write or an information designer successfully design.
So what are a user’s goals? According to Alan Cooper, one of the most respected software designers and father of Visual Basic, no one knows.
Well, all right, no one who hasn’t read his landmark book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design1. According to Mr. Cooper, those who are being paid to know (e.g. software engineers, program developers, information designers, technical writers) don’t know or are mistaken in what they think the user’s goals are. Cooper writes:
Almost all of the problems with modern software user interface design originate from well-intentioned, intelligent and capable people focusing on the wrong things. Instead of technology and tasks, we must focus our gaze on the goals toward which users strive, even if they themselves are sometimes unaware of them.2
Substitute “technical writing” for “modern software user interface design” in the paragraph above and it seems technical writers don’t know either. And did you catch that last part? Cooper claims even the users themselves can be unaware of their own goals.
Four Common Goals of All Users
So what are our chances of learning these illusive user’s goals? Excellent, in fact, because Mr. Cooper has identified them and is happy to share them with us. According to Cooper, all users have four common goals3:
- Not looking stupid
- Not making any big mistakes
- Getting an adequate amount of work done
- Having fun (or at least not being too bored)
The mistake most often made about user’s goals, Cooper asserts, is that it is assumed that the user’s goals have something to do with the program’s business purpose.
Do You Work for Your Client or Your User?
There isn’t an aspect of software development, programming, information design, or technical writing that doesn’t supposedly start with the thorough consideration of the end user. We are taught, tutored, reminded, and admonished to begin each effort with the user in mind. Who will be teaching, using, or reading this program, application, or document? Under what circumstances? At what level—consumer, technician, manager? With what skills—novice, intermediate, advanced? Yet it is easy at this stage, Cooper warns, to mistake our client’s goals for those of the user.
Our client’s goals may be to produce a manual to accompany the latest release of software program that cross catalogues business invoices by date, customer name, product, and amount. Their goal is to highlight the updates, detail the program’s compatibility with other software the company produces, elaborate on what it was designed to do, promote the features of the program that set it apart from the competition, and, oh yes, instruct the user in which functions produce which results.
It’s unlikely that you’ll find “not making the user look stupid” as one of the stated company goals for this software release.
Cooper goes on to suggest that if the user’s goals aren’t realized, the company’s goals are unlikely to be realized as well. But if we as technical writers begin with the four user’s goals in mind, there’s a better than good chance that the company goals will also be reached.
How Technical Writers Support Users
Returning to our original charge of creating valuable, compelling, and empowering information and experiences for others and applying what we’ve just learned about user’s goals, we can now see how our efforts as technical writers support their goals as users:
Table 1: How Writer’s Efforts Support User’s Goals
|
Effort (Writer's Goals) |
Creating valuable information and experiences |
Creating empowering information and experiences |
Creating compelling information and experiences |
|
Results (User's Goals) |
Getting an adequate amount of work done |
Not looking stupid and not making any big mistakes |
Having fun (or at least not being too bored) |
Finding a Guru
There isn’t a single text written today about information design that doesn’t have relevancy for technical writers. As technical writers, we are sometimes charged with simply “informing” the user, as in white papers or product information copy. But information designers, software designers, information architects, and anyone else who is responsible for relaying appropriate, effective, useable information to another person so that a task can be successfully performed is absolutely required to understand that user. And since the psychology of the user can be a career unto itself, those who can distill the user’s goals into axioms we can understand and use, as Cooper has, quickly become gurus in the field.
Cooper identifies the premise of his book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, as simple:
If achieving the user’s goals is the basis of our user interface design, then the user will be satisfied and happy. If the user is happy, he will gladly pay us money, and then we will be successful.4
Now substitute “technical writing” for “user interface design” in the quote above and it seems technical writers will be successful, too.
References
Cooper A. About face: the essentials of user interface design. Foster
City: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc; 1995. 580 p.
Ibid. p 9
Ibid. p 12
Ibid. (back cover)
Peggy Heath, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and formerly in the fields of public health and not-for-profit program development, is currently pursuing certification in Professional and Technical Writing and a career transition into the field. She can be reached at pj@femlore.com.
