Improving the effectiveness of information

In an earlier post, I compared my work as a technical writer with Island hopping: going from one island to another. The truth is that to perform our job well we need information from different sources within an organization. And on the other hand people from different parts of the organization have a need for our skills when it comes to writing and presenting information. In a way we therefor function as information integrator within the organization: gathering information from different platforms and sources and creating output for different depatments (internal customers) and in different formats. As an example: When I created the documentation for my current customer, I gathered information about the product from different deparments and developed the on-line help. As a result, the Sales department became aware of my presence, noticed the quality of the information and asked me to create the Sales information. Currently I am working on a structure for the product specifications. In

In March 2008 my new article "The Flexible Intranet" will be published in Intercom, the monthly magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. In this article I will examine the typical problems found in a corporate intranet site and demonstrate how knowledge-driven design can improve the effectiveness of intranet sites. In the article I use the example of a helpdesk that delivers support for mobile phones. With this example I will demonstrate how an effective intranet site guides the helpdesk employee toward the information and presents the answers to the questions they are confronted with. Saul Carliner, an internationally known expert on technical communication, contributed to this article. Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication , is published to provide examples and applications of technical communication that will promote its readers' professional development. Intercom is published for the benefit of STC members, each of whom receives

You probably recognize this situation: You have to write a manual, product leaflet or text for a website and you need some information about this specific topic. The information about the topic is available within the organization, but you have to gather it from different people from several departments. And they don't like you messing with their content. They want to keep control over it. Sometimes our job as technical writer is like moving from one island to the other, building bridges and demolishing borders. If you - for instance - need to describe a product, you first travel to the island of the product developers to gather the product specifications. Next you can go to the marketing department to get some of their sales statements about the product and you might want to hop to the Service department to get the ins and outs of their servicing approach. Does this sound familiar to you? I have found this situation in all kinds of organizations. In some cases these organizations

In the previous entry, I demonstrated three types of knowledge models. These models can help us structure the information we acquire from functional specifications, subject matter experts, the marketing department and - in some cases - our own observations. When combined they offer us different paths to our information. We have looked at: Thematical models Taxonomies / concept models Composition models A fourth model is called the Attribute model . An attribute model shows attributes and values: colors, specific characteristics, etc. An example is shown below: With the attribute model we can describe all possible characteristics of a product range and link them to the actual products. This makes it possible to make an overview of all variations within a productrange. The models can help us choose between products. Example: You call the service desk of the manufacturer of your TFT screen Service desk employee: "Do you know the exact product type?" You: "I am not sure, I c

Last time, we have discussed what the benefits of knowledge modelling are. Now it is time, to take a first look at knowledge modelling, starting with a simple hierarchical model: As technical writers we are used to work with these kind of content structures, as illustrated above. This is the type of structure we not only use in manuals, but also in most on-line help systems and even websites. In this example we see two levels of information. When we would put this content structure in a graphical model it would look like this: All content elements - we call them 'concepts' in a knowledge model - are related to the next level with a relation of the type 'Subtheme of'. This type of knowledge model is very suitable for navigating and is supported by a large group of documentation, Help and website tools. Another very common knowledge model is the taxonomy. This type of knowledge model shows classes of concepts and their sub-types. All relationships in the model are of the

In my article in ISTC's Communicator (Autumn 2007) I explained that developing more effective information products asks for a knowledge-driven approach to communication. This knowledge-driven approach requires first of all that we offer the knowledge needed in a usable and understandable way, in line with the user’s knowledge and level of experience. The second requirement is that we should offer our users the right knowledge - from the enormous amount of available knowledge – at the right time. New semantic technology provides us with the opportunity to support our users in interpreting information within their context. The most important characteristics of these solutions are: non-hierarchical navigation: presents a mind map of the information, with different types of links making it possible to browse quickly through related topics and offering different points of view to different types of users decision trees: help users to make complex decisions by asking them simple question

Be Informed offers a solution for publishing the same information — witt one model set and multiple content sources — to different media, in different formats and for several audiences. One of the disadvantages of the toolset - for international audiences - was that untill now all Be Informed releases were targeted at a Dutch user group, only containing on-line help and user assistance in Dutch. Be Informed hired me to produce a new on-line help system for their product suite, featuring both English and Dutch documentation. With release 3.2.4 the first version of this on-line help - with both function related help and some task related guidance - will be available. The upcoming months a configuration wizard and step by step guidances will be added to the documentation. The international release of Be Informed is scheduled to be launched on the 10th of December 2007. The on-line help will also be released on a website. I will come back to this as soon as it is available and provide you

The Machinery Directive(MD) sets out safety requirements for new machines, assemblies of machines, interchangeable equipment and safety components, which must be met before these products can be traded within the European Economic Area. As of the 29th December 2009 the provisions of the new Machine Directive (2006/42/EC) will be applicable. This new Machine Directive includes some modifications to the essential health and safety requirements. An important aspect within the Machine Directive is the product documentation. Within the new Machine Directive the traceability of documentation becomes more important than ever. Manufacturers must keep the EC declaration of conformity and declaration of incorporation for a period of at least 10 years from the last date of manufacture. The focus will be on the whole lifecycle of products and its documentation, with special emphasis on operational health and safety issues. Documentation specialists now face the challenge of creating documentatio

Yesterday I received the author's proof of my article "How knowledge becomes usable", scheduled for publication in the Winter edition of Communicator, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC). This article is a follow-up on my presentation at the ISTC Conference 2007 in Liverpool, where I explained how you can incorporate knowledge-driven design in information products. The Winter edition of Communicator will be published in December 2007. If you are a member or a subscriber of Communicator, you will received this issue when it is published. Otherwise, if there is something of interest to you, contact the ISTC Office to purchase a copy. The ISTC is the largest UK-based society for professional communicators. If you are a technical communicator and working in the UK - or Europe in general - I can strongly recommend membership of the ISTC. Look for more information on their website: www.istc.org.uk .

In my profession as a technical communicator, there is a huge emphasis on creating information: every new product and every law, policy, rule or process has its own documentation. And, although content management systems help us reuse existing information, the total amount of information is constantly growing. Finding the right information within a reasonable amount of time is becoming more and more challenging for users. Search instruments and navigation trees do not offer a proper solution. As users of search engines like Google and Yahoo now, even the most sophisticated search engines cannot determine what information is relevant to the user and offer long lists of possibilities. On top of this, novice users often lack the necessary information to phrase useful inquiries (Horton, 1994). Navigation trees work fine on small-scale websites but, as soon as the number of topics grows, both the width and the depth of the navigation tree grow tremendously. New semantic technologies enable