DRAWING MORE ON THE RIGHT-SIDE OF THE BRAIN

If author Daniel Pink is right, tech­ni­cal writ­ers’ jobs may be chang­ing again.

Pink, who wrote A Whole New Mind, con­tends that the devel­oped world is enter­ing a new era—the so-called con­cep­tu­al age—during which right-brained skills, such as design and sto­ry­telling, will become far more cru­cial than tra­di­tion­al­ly left-brained skills such as account­ing and com­put­er pro­gram­ming. He cites three trends:

• Automa­tion: Com­put­ers are increas­ing­ly more pow­er­ful (no big sur­prise to any­one who has heard of Moore’s law). As they become pow­er­ful, soft­ware can replace some of the sequen­tial, log­i­cal work for­mer­ly per­formed by our left brains. One sim­ple exam­ple: Instead of hir­ing an accoun­tant to review your tax­es, you can buy an off-the-shelf soft­ware pro­gram that will cal­cu­late your tax­es and grant you a refund for $19.
• Asia: Asian coun­tries are brim­ming with ambi­tious, edu­cat­ed peo­ple who can often take on the jobs for­mer­ly done by West­ern­ers. Any­one who has worked in IT in the last 10 years will have noticed that soft­ware devel­op­ment jobs some­times dis­ap­pear in devel­oped coun­tries, only to be replaced by staff in an Asian coun­try, usu­al­ly because of the cost savings.
• Abun­dance: Con­sumers have more choice than ever before. Most mid­dle-class cit­i­zens have more mate­r­i­al wealth than any gen­er­a­tion in his­to­ry. With all these choic­es at our dis­pos­al, many con­sumers can now buy well designed, lux­u­ry items that were once only avail­able to wealthy con­sumers. For exam­ple, many con­sumers won’t sim­ply set­tle for a util­i­tar­i­an toast­er that was on the mar­ket in the 1970s. Con­sumers now want a stain­less steel, ergonom­i­cal­ly designed appli­ance that can toast up to six slices of their favorite bread, and make a state­ment while resid­ing on a gran­ite kitchen countertop.

In short, some of the high­ly ana­lyt­i­cal jobs are becom­ing com­modi­ties that can be per­formed by a com­put­er or an inex­pen­sive work­er in Asia. Pink con­tends that devel­op­ing right-brain skills may help dif­fer­en­ti­ate you and keep you more employ­able. He iden­ti­fies six right-brain-asso­ci­at­ed aptitudes:

a) Sym­pho­ny: Adding inven­tion and big pic­ture thinking
b) Mean­ing: The pur­pose is the jour­ney, give mean­ing to life.
c) Design: Mov­ing beyond func­tion to engage the senses.
d) Sto­ry: Nar­ra­tive added to prod­ucts and ser­vices, not just argument.
e) Empa­thy: Going beyond log­ic and engag­ing emotion.
f) Play: Bring­ing humor and light-heart­ed­ness to busi­ness and products.

As tech­ni­cal writ­ers, I believe many of us already incor­po­rate some of these apti­tudes into our work.

Design
Many of us already mar­ry good writ­ing with design to make con­tent more acces­si­ble and eas­i­er to under­stand. When you mar­ry the two skills, tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion may actu­al­ly be enjoy­able to read. I per­son­al­ly think Apple’s tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion is use­ful and—dare I say it—beautiful.

In con­trast, there are many exam­ples of doc­u­men­ta­tion that are ter­ri­bly writ­ten and almost impos­si­ble to deci­pher. Pink argues that con­sumers are often will­ing to spend more on good design. Increas­ing­ly, con­sumers want some­thing that makes a state­ment. As proof, see the toast­er exam­ple I mentioned.

Sto­ry­telling
Pink argues that to make your mes­sage mem­o­rable and com­pelling, we must incor­po­rate the tech­niques of good sto­ry­telling. I per­son­al­ly don’t aspire to make my online help mir­ror a Hol­ly­wood script but I do think we could improve the way we deliv­er con­cep­tu­al infor­ma­tion. For exam­ple, we can incor­po­rate metaphors and add more visu­als to dri­ve home our message.

As tech­ni­cal writ­ers, we’re not immune to off-shoring. In Van­cou­ver (where I live), I’ve seen a num­ber of com­pa­nies try to off-shore tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. Employ­ing and mas­ter­ing right-brain activ­i­ties may help us stand out and even stave off job losses.