Saturday, August 08, 2009

When everything is vague

"Without interacting with the user, you can’t learn the user’s vocabulary and the tasks they need to perform. Without a knowledge of user vocabulary and tasks, your help material is destined to be unhelpful. Without helpful user assistance, your role on the project team and your own sense of importance on the project diminish."

I have pasted these words from Tom Johsnon's excellent post on the various level of harassment and stumbling blocks encountered by the hapless technical writers. Another method of ostacrization is "the domain is so vast" or "the functionality is too complex" comments. This is equivalent to telling you that I am not share my knowledge that easily with you.

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