Comments on: Sheep, Chaos, and User Experience

By: Weekly links roundup by Communications from DMN

Weekly links roundup by Communications from DMN — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:35:49 +0000

[...] A musing on sheep, chaos, and the user experience [...]

By: What Users Don’t Care About | I'd Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson

What Users Don’t Care About | I'd Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:04:44 +0000

[...] The user could care less whether the PDF manual is single sourced. Keith Anderson (on Twitter, @suredoc) writes, I personally believe you can argue the merits of DITA or single sourcing all day long, but the dirty little secret of our industry is simply that users don't care. They just don't care. They do know how they want information and will consume the information in ways that are comfortable or familiar to them ("Sheep, Chaos, and User Experience"). [...]

By: Content Theory: Sheep and Chaos — MK Anderson « Technical Writing

Content Theory: Sheep and Chaos — MK Anderson « Technical Writing — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:35:36 +0000

[...] Go here to read the rest: Content Theory: Sheep … [...]

By: Eddie VanArsdall

Eddie VanArsdall — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:39:14 +0000

Although some may try to convince us otherwise, I don't believe that DITA will ever be a one-size-fits-all solution. I also do not believe that it is designed to produce the ultimate user experience. Where I believe that it will eventually succeed is in highly regulated industries where content must be ultra-precise and consistent–industries where, in some cases, accuracy of content can literally make a difference between life and death. There will always be a need for this type of content. Whether the content is engaging is a secondary consideration.

The interactive software market is where DITA's success is questionable. Designing user assistance for more creative types of software is simply not a one-size-fits-all scenario.

By: mkanderson

mkanderson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:22:43 +0000

Agreed, DITA is not where it should be from a user's perspective, but is coming along as a good structured standard. I only used it as an example of a process that left out user experience and also as an emerging standard the STC organization ignored. In retrospect, my article covered a lot of topics because I keep seeing them overlapping when I write about them. You have the STC culture, the traditional technical communication culture, and the user experience culture. Technical communication as we know it today will either evolve to compliment new technologies and user expectations, or somebody else is going to come along and take ownership of future technical content.

By: mkanderson

mkanderson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:16:01 +0000

I only used DITA and social media as examples of trends. The user experience is not about jumping on bandwagons, but it is about watching what users are doing in the real world and making their experience with our products as positive as possible.

By: mkanderson

mkanderson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:13:19 +0000

For me it's not about artisan versus factory worker. Some tech writers are creatives and some are not. It depends on the job. It's about an entire industry remaining relevant.

By: Tammy Paul

Tammy Paul — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:25:30 +0000

I agree with many of the points in this article. I evaluated DITA for our docs about a year ago, and ended up with some other misgivings not mentioned above:
-It seemed to require me to rewrite some topics and present some information in a way that was not in the best interest in my users. (Maybe this fits into the "controlled" point you made above.)
-When I read a book that was put together in DITA, I noticed a disconnectedness between topics that were supposed to be sequential. Coding examples didn't show progression from one graphic to the next – previous steps were omitted. This was confusing.

However, I have to say that when you look at what your users want, not every audience is yet ready to embrace social networking as the way to receive information. Our audience includes users with a pretty wide spectrum of computer and internet skills, and some have told us they still prefer manuals. (We don't print manuals, but we do provide PDFs.) We are focusing more attention on the Web-based delivery methods that have more long-term promise, but we don't want to leave part of our audience behind.

Thanks for the food for thought. I think it's important to constantly gauge how your audience is changing and how they prefer to receive information.

By: Ellis Pratt

Ellis Pratt — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:00:33 +0000

My thoughts echo those of Tom Johnson's. There's this "technical writer as artisan" v." technical writer as factory worker" debate implicit in this. The missing piece in DITA is the publishing – everything else is under the hood – making writers more efficient, more systematic.

However, the publishing aspect is likely to arrive. It's like the car industry – you need modular components in order to be able to create 30 odd variations from the same platform (VW Golf, Audi TT, VW Jetta, Skoda Octavia,Audi A3, Golf convertible etc ) .

By: Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:53:45 +0000

I had a conversation with a colleague last week that echoed some of the points you make about DITA and the lack of impact it seems to make on a user. Although the DITA structure is an advancement in technical writing methodology, to the user, it still looks like the same old manual. I agree that it doesn't seem like a user-centered advancement.

On the other hand, DITA has given us the ability to produce more deliverables that are more role-based and customized to the user, in a shorter amount of time, without copying and pasting. So there's an argument there as well.

Thanks for the engaging post.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:26:25 +0000

This is well written and thought out. The fallacy that no one reads the documentation is a poor excuse for not doing the job the right way. It is true that good usability means the documentation is less critical to a successful user experience. The successful experience should be the goal of all software, but seldom is. Twitter is excellent example of success in the face of chaos. People find a way to get it.

The best part is the use of Cecily's picture. We all are sheep, hoping for a good Shepherd to watch over us.