Robert Desprez Communications

IS HELP 2.0 HYPED?

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There’s been a lot of dis­cus­sion about “Help 2.0” in which users will be able to eas­i­ly com­ment on the con­tent you’ve writ­ten in a help topic.

The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Communication’s Inter­com mag­a­zine recent­ly pub­lished an arti­cle titled “Under­stand­ing the Help 2.0 Rev­o­lu­tion.” I have to admit that I thought the arti­cle con­tained some excit­ing ideas: for the first time tech­ni­cal writ­ers may have an online dia­log with our read­ers using tech­nolo­gies like web posts and commenting.

In the same vein, author and teacher Clay Shirky wrote a book called Cog­ni­tive Sur­plus. In it, he asserts that North Amer­i­cans are watch­ing less tele­vi­sion and are embrac­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nolo­gies like blogs and wikis. Col­lec­tive­ly, we can pool our efforts to achieve amaz­ing results. Just look at the colos­sal effort of web sites like Wikipedia.

But I think we have a long way to go. For all this talk of col­lab­o­ra­tion, usabil­i­ty guru Jakob Nielsen argues that only one per­cent of peo­ple con­tribute to a site, nine per­cent are inter­mit­tent con­trib­u­tors, and 90 per­cent just read the con­tent. So if Nielsen is right, most peo­ple are still being pas­sive. Doesn’t sound that dif­fer­ent to watch­ing television.

Here’s an excerpt from Nielsen’s web site:

“Blogs have even worse par­tic­i­pa­tion inequal­i­ty than is evi­dent in the 90–9‑1 rule that char­ac­ter­izes most online com­mu­ni­ties. With blogs, the rule is more like 95–5‑0.1. Inequal­i­ties are also found on Wikipedia, where more than 99% of users are lurk­ers. Accord­ing to Wikipedi­a’s “about” page, it has only 68,000 active con­trib­u­tors, which is 0.2% of the 32 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors it has in the U.S. alone.”

Grant­ed, Nielsen’s research is about five years old. Maybe more peo­ple are now con­tribut­ing? But I doubt it’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly more.

Here‘s the bot­tom line. If you’ve cre­at­ed a web site or help sys­tem that incor­po­rates Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies like com­ment­ing, don’t be sur­prised if you ini­tial­ly receive a trick­le of respons­es from your read­ers. My bet is that tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to reg­u­lar­ly pro­mote their help sys­tems or web sites to encour­age more read­ers to post their feed­back. If you want an online dia­log with cus­tomers, it‘s not just a mat­ter of “build it and they will come.”

TECHNICAL WRITERS ARE RELUCTANT SELF-MARKETERS

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I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to tech­ni­cal writ­ers who’ve said to me that they dis­like self-marketing.

If you’re employ­ee and you don’t like mar­ket­ing your­self, it may mean you suf­fer from a lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty with­in your com­pa­ny. Peo­ple know your name but they may not under­stand what you do or how you add any val­ue to the orga­ni­za­tion. If you’re a con­tract writer and you dis­like mar­ket­ing, the results can be more serious—a track record that is marred by long peri­ods of unemployment.

Why do tech­ni­cal writ­ers dis­like mar­ket­ing so much? Here are a cou­ple of guesses:

  • Most tech­ni­cal writ­ers are intro­verts. By their very nature, tech­ni­cal writ­ers don’t like to stand in the lime­light or toot their own horns. They enjoy work­ing alone, not net­work­ing, and cer­tain­ly not pre­sent­ing a top­ic to others.
  • They haven’t learned about mar­ket­ing. Many writ­ers I’ve talked to often wrin­kle their noses when talk­ing about mar­ket­ing as if it’s a dirty word.

Mar­ket­ing, in my mind, is vital to the ongo­ing suc­cess of an orga­ni­za­tion. As a con­tract writer, I believe it’s impor­tant to remind clients and prospects about who I am and the ser­vices I offer, even when I’m work­ing on a long-term con­tract. If you don’t remind peo­ple of the ser­vices you provide—whether it’s an e‑mail, blog post, or upcom­ing pre­sen­ta­tion you’re sched­uled to deliver—people for­get about you. And if they for­get you, you won’t hear about upcom­ing jobs.

Some­times peo­ple dis­like some­thing because they don’t under­stand it. If you’re a con­tract tech­ni­cal writer strug­gling with lin­ing up con­tracts and feel that mar­ket­ing is not your forte, I’d rec­om­mend you read Duct Tape Mar­ket­ing by John Jantsch, which pro­vides an excel­lent overview of mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties for a small busi­ness. Who knows? You might start enjoy­ing mar­ket­ing after all.

DO YOU FIND THE STC VALUABLE?

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The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (STC) just isn’t that help­ful to me anymore.

I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, when I start­ed my career 13 years ago, I loved the orga­ni­za­tion. The Van­cou­ver chap­ter had month­ly meet­ings, there were annu­al salary sur­veys pub­lished for Cana­di­ans, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sions abound­ed, and I reli­gious­ly read the organization’s pub­li­ca­tions. I even vol­un­teered as the vice-pres­i­dent of the local chapter.

So what hap­pened? How did I lose that “lov­ing feel­ing”? A few reasons:

The STC’s Cana­di­an salary sur­vey dis­ap­peared. A num­bers of years ago, the STC stopped pub­lish­ing a salary sur­vey for Cana­di­ans. It was a real dis­ap­point­ment. Now I’m left with hear­ing anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about mar­ket rates that seem to vary wild­ly. Some writ­ers appear will­ing to work for noth­ing while oth­er com­pa­nies freely want to pay more than the stan­dard rates. The salary sur­vey was a use­ful tool.

The local job bank is mediocre. In my expe­ri­ence, one of the valu­able rea­sons to become an STC mem­ber was that it pro­vid­ed access to the local job bank, which used to be a vibrant source of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. These days, there are still a smat­ter­ing of jobs list­ed in the local job bank but I’ve found that free web sites such as http://www.indeed.ca to be more helpful.

The STC is no longer the defin­i­tive voice of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Years ago, the STC was the main pur­vey­or of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion knowl­edge. I used to avid­ly read the organization’s Inter­com and Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion mag­a­zines. Per­haps the STC’s posi­tion of author­i­ty began to wane when Web 2.0 emerged. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers start­ed writ­ing blogs and many of these blogs, like Tom Johnson’s http://idratherbewriting.com/, offer valu­able infor­ma­tion to tech­ni­cal writ­ers much faster than the STC ever could. And they’re free.

To sum­ma­rize, the STC is prob­a­bly still use­ful to new­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers. But if you have a pass­ing knowl­edge of some of the lead­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing blogs (here’s a list of influ­en­tial tech­ni­cal writ­ing blog­gers), and you under­stand where and how to look for work and how much to charge, the STC may not be that use­ful to you either.

NOTE: This blog entry might sound like a crit­i­cism of the STC’s vol­un­teers and mem­bers. That’s not my intention—I think there are many tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to be involved with the STC. As I not­ed, I vol­un­teered with the chap­ter for many years.

GOOD PRACTICES FOR CREATING ONLINE HELP FOR MOBILE DEVICES

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I believe that tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to think more and more about cre­at­ing online help for mobile devices as smart­phone sales sky­rock­et. Accord­ing to the Pew Research ser­vice, mobile devices will be the pri­ma­ry con­nec­tion tool to the Inter­net for most peo­ple by 2020.

With that in mind, I’ve start­ed read­ing more about cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile appli­ca­tions. Joe Welinske, the pres­i­dent of Writ­er­sUA, recent­ly wrote a series of webi­na­rs about mobile user assis­tance. I pur­chased the first webi­nar titled “UA in Mobile Plat­forms.” In it Welinske writes, “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing I have learned in my work with mobile apps is that bring­ing over Help designs from desk­top appli­ca­tions is a real­ly bad idea.”

So what are some good prac­tices for cre­at­ing help on mobile appli­ca­tions? As I am just learn­ing about the sub­ject myself, here are some rec­om­men­da­tions that I’ve gleaned. One real­ly good arti­cle on the sub­ject is “A User-Cen­tered Approach to Web Design For Mobile Devices” by Lyn­don Cere­jo. Here are some of Cerejo’s and Welinske’s rec­om­men­da­tions that can be applied to help:

Design for a small screen size

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is not one stan­dard screen size (this reminds me of the brows­er wars from years ago). To com­pli­cate mat­ters, some phones can change ori­en­ta­tion and users expect the web site to resize accordingly.

Simplify navigation

  • Reduce the num­ber of cat­e­gories and lev­els of nav­i­ga­tion, and rearrange con­tent based on pri­or­i­ty, pre­sent­ing the most impor­tant cat­e­gories first.
  • Use clear, con­cise and con­sis­tent labels for nav­i­ga­tion across the site.
  • When design­ing for touch, make sure the tap size (width or height) for the nav­i­ga­tion item is at least 30 pixels.
  • Bread­crumbs are usu­al­ly not used on mobile sites since nav­i­ga­tion is not usu­al­ly so deep that users need a trail back.
  • Make links obvi­ous, and pro­vide clear and imme­di­ate visu­al feed­back to show the select­ed link.
  • Be suc­cinct because of the small screen size.
  • Use short and descrip­tive titles for your pages.
  • If you must include scrolling, scroll in only one direc­tion. Most mobile sites scroll vertically.

Design for intermittent connectivity

Cell phone com­pa­nies are offer­ing faster net­works but it doesn’t mean the ser­vice is always avail­able. And not all users have unlim­it­ed data plans. So make sure that pages can be loaded quick­ly on a mobile device, and that images are rel­a­tive­ly small.

Search and indexes

Welinske believes index­ing and search tech­niques are of less use in mobile appli­ca­tions. “If a user needs to search for Help con­tent, then the user assis­tance is far too large.”

Design for a distracted user

Cere­jo argues that you can­not con­trol where cus­tomers will use the phone or even how it will be used. Here’s a quote from his arti­cle: “Pic­ture a mobile user try­ing to find direc­tions using a tiny phone with inter­mit­tent con­nec­tiv­i­ty, while strap hang­ing and sway­ing in a sub­way train with sub-opti­mal light­ing con­di­tions, deaf­ened by the screech­ing of wheels on tracks — that gives you some con­text of use. Sim­ply put, con­text is about the envi­ron­ment and con­di­tions of usage, includ­ing dis­trac­tions, mul­ti­task­ing, motion, light­ing con­di­tions and poor connectivity.”

Summary

In the next decade, most peo­ple will be using their cell phones to con­nect to the Inter­net. If this pre­dic­tion holds true, tech­ni­cal writ­ers will need to mas­ter deliv­er­ing help on smart­phones too. It will be an excit­ing and chal­leng­ing ride.

AMAZING TED TALK HIGHLIGHTS THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL BOOKS

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In a recent blog post, I wrote some of my thoughts on how I think tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion may change in the next 10 years. Based on the num­ber of com­ments post­ed, it seemed to gen­er­ate a lot of interest.

On a relat­ed note, I recent­ly vis­it­ed www.mytechcomm.org for the first time. One of the dis­cus­sion top­ics includ­ed a link to an online video that’s avail­able on the TED con­fer­ence web site. In the video, soft­ware devel­op­er Mike Matas presents the first full-length inter­ac­tive book for the iPad.

In the dis­cus­sion group, some tech­ni­cal writ­ers argued that this could be the future of tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. In my opin­ion, I could see some of these tech­nolo­gies being employed. But I’d also haz­ard a guess that cre­at­ing these inter­ac­tive graph­ics is chal­leng­ing and prob­a­bly very time con­sum­ing. What do you think? Here’s the web site: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas.html

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290