Penquis Valley High School

OVERVIEW
To create an effective User Document, the writer must know who he/she is writing for. This article presents four dimensions (Skills, Attitude, Knowledge and Experience) for describing the User of your product (your Documentation Reader), and how to build a Persona that turns your generic User into an almost-real person. The article stresses the need [...]

OVERVIEW
Lost or garbled information is a terrible waste. Especially if it’s the information you gathered from an interview and must now write into your User Document. Here’s how to prevent that waste.
THE SITUATION
You had an interview with a Subject Matter Expert (SME, someone who has the information that you need) for your product. [...]

OVERVIEW
You’re a non-writer who has just been assigned to write the User Documentation for your company’s new product. Your overwhelming emotion is fear, perhaps with some anger.
With any new activity there will be some anxiety. Writing may have added anxiety because of your writing experience while you were a student.
Writing User Documentation is not like [...]

OVERVIEW
Stop confusing your Reader with the words you use. Your Reader is trying his/her best to understand how your product works without having to figure out your writing. Here are some writing guidelines to help you stop baffling your Reader.
SAME CONCEPT: SAME WORDS
User Documents are not meant to be entertaining. Do not try to be [...]

OVERVIEW
In your User Documentation, you direct your Reader to perform tasks with your product. If you don’t tell your Reader what to expect when performing those tasks, you will have a baffled Reader, resulting in dissatisfaction and expensive calls to technical support.
EXAMPLE: REVERSE OSMOSIS WATER FILTER
I bought and installed a Reverse Osmosis water filter. The [...]

OVERVIEW
A good User Document includes sections on how to set up, use, and care for the product. However, to create a great User Document , the technical writer should use the Persona, generated in the analysis of the User/Reader, to create the topics for the most useful section of the User Document. This [...]