Characteristics of technical communication - Technical communication fundamentals

Practical models for technical communication - Shannon Kelley 2021

Characteristics of technical communication
Technical communication fundamentals

Technical communication shares characteristics with other forms of communication. Many of the concepts you’ve studied in other writing or composition courses apply here.

What makes technical communication different, however, is the emphasis on communicating technically complex or practical information. You can see this difference most clearly when you compare technical writing with creative writing (figure 1.4).

Three attributes that distinguish technical communication are its emphasis on multiple modes and media, its focus on the user, and its concern with the needs of the audience. When technical communicators craft their messages, they keep these concerns in mind. We’ll take a closer look at these three characteristics of technical writing in the following sections.

Multimodal and Multimedia Content

Technical communicators must weigh the needs of the audience, the technical content, and the form that the content will take. Today’s users prefer interactive documents presented in a variety of forms. Lack of choice frustrates users who are accustomed to accessing information in multiple ways.

Modes are broad categories for how meaning is created, and experienced. Modes come in five forms: linguistic, aural, visual, spatial, and gestural.

Multimedia, or medium, (media is the singular form of medium) refers to the final product that serves as a container for the information.

See Chapter 4 for an extended exploration of multimodal communication.

Figure 1.4. Creative Writing vs. Technical Writing. Examine this comparison of creative writing and technical writing. Consider the context and purpose of each type of writing. The audience’s expectations may differ for each.

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Different modes of communication include linguistic (words), aural (sounds), visual (images), spatial (arrangement), and gestural (movement) (figure 1.5). A document with more than one of these modes uses multimodal communication. While most YouTube videos involve all five modes, a person with hearing loss interreacts differently with the video’s content than a hearing person does. As a result, multimodal communication is shaped by the specific user’s experience.

Figure 1.5. Forms of Multimodal Communication. You may not use all these modes all of the time, but you should make conscious choices about which mode or combination of modes best conveys your ideas.

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Media is the plural form of medium, so multimedia communication is when a technical communicator makes use of more than one method of delivery. This textbook is a medium. A PowerPoint presentation is a medium. A podcast is a medium. Think of a web page that has an interactive menu, full-color images, and a video with an introduction to the site’s content. That’s a good example of multimedia.

User-Focused Content

Consider for a moment the essays, reports, and research papers you’ve written for other courses. Did you think about your audience? Many students—if they think about their audience at all—focus on what the teacher has stated about the assignment (how many pages, the topic, and other required elements). This is a common view of documents produced for school. The student writes to satisfy the requirements rather than to satisfy a user.

Now, contrast that with text messages you’ve sent or posts you’ve put up on social media. Who was the intended audience? For that text message, it was your friend, right? You wrote it for a specific person. And the social media post? You know your followers will see it. Maybe there are even followers you are hoping won’t see it (such as your parents or employer). For both messages, you used language and images to capture your audience’s attention.

As mentioned earlier, we refer to the audience for technical communication as users, people who use your document to accomplish something. Once you enter the workforce, however, you may have another audience to consider—the client.

Clients hire technical communicators to create content for them. As a technical communicator, you’re not just writing for the end user—the people who come to the website and see the blog post you’ve written or the patients waiting in the doctor’s office who pick up the pamphlet you designed. You’re also writing to meet the needs of a client. Because they are paying you in cash or experience, clients expect you to do what they ask. It’s challenging to balance the demands of the client and needs of the end user, but that’s what you need to do if you want to keep your job. You must have knowledge of the product, the process, the users, and the client.

Need-Driven Content

To create content for specific users, you must understand their needs. If you miss the mark here, your product will fail no matter how professional it appears. This concept—that you have to know your audience’s needs—is essential in technical communication.

How do you get a solid idea of your audience and their needs? First, stop and take a careful look at who your users might be. Get detailed. The more you understand their experiences, the more likely you are to meet their needs. You may need to step outside your comfort zone and get to know more about their culture, demographic, and desires.

Avoid the temptation to say you’re writing for a general audience. For example, when writing a persuasive essay for class, your goal is to incite change. Your instructor writes on your paper: “Who is your intended audience?”

“Everyone,” you reply. “Everyone should read this paper and change.” While this might be true, most successful persuasion targets a specific demographic. To craft an effective message, you should have a purpose and understand your audience. “Everyone” is a tall order. Likewise, if you are trying to start a new club on campus, you need to ask yourself if everyone cares about whether a new club is created. Probably not. Useful technical communication focuses on a specific user. To be successful, you need to be intentional and systematic in understanding what that person wants and needs. One way to do this is to create a user profile.

Creating a User Profile

Each document meets unique needs based on the problem it is solving. The specifics of this problem determine the content and design of the document. You should tailor the presentation of a document to the needs of your particular audience (figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6. Sample User Profile Questions. Use these categories and questions to develop a user profile.

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Unless you are producing content for a group of people you already know well, you will need to conduct research to understand your audience. A user profile collects information about your potential audience assembled through interviews, surveys, reports, or conversations with your client. In other words, a user profile requires you to conduct primary research.

These firsthand accounts can help you determine the user’s demographics, which are the unique characteristics of your target audience. The more you define your typical users, the more you can anticipate their needs. This includes the ways they might use your content, the potential pitfalls, and the level of detail and explanation you need to include.

A recipe is an example of a need-driven technical document designed for a specific end user who wants to make a specific meal. The content focuses on ingredients, preparation instructions, safety warnings, and alternatives or troubleshooting tips. The design focuses on presenting this content in a way that makes it easy to follow. Compare these two approaches for a soufflé recipe to see how content and design should work together (figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7. Recipe Comparison. Examine these two partial recipe examples. Notice how the content and design differ.

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