A Quick Look At Writing Dynamic Technical Documentation

We all have have an experience with technical documentation that filled a small binder and held the information that was needed on the last page. This kind of documentation is not only boring, but incredibly frustrating for a consumer who wants to use the product they have purchased not learn how to build the product. Over the last few years more manufacturers and designers have discovered that writing dynamic documentation for products is almost as important as building the products.

There are some easy ways to make documentation very simple for your audience to read and use. A huge key to getting return customers for your products is to have the kind of technical documentation that is consistently easy to use and navigate. The methods of writing this documentation has changed as people have become more embedded into the computer mediums and this must be taken into account when you are writing documentation.

People who spend a lot of time on the computer have developed a reading habit that must be transferred to the written word in order for technical writing to be effective. When people read from a computer, they skim/ignore huge chunks of information and stop at the middle of bullet points, bold text, text that is out of alignment, and graphics.

The style of writing that is effective has evolved significantly from “writing styles” considered the norm historically. Writing dynamic materials requires that the document be short, to the point, interesting, and incorporates bullet points, bold text and graphics.

In most cases, when a person has designed or built a product, they know every piece of the gadget and what it will do. The tendency is to talk about this great stuff. Unfortunately, the user doesn’t care about that, they want you to tell them “screw bolt A into B and the gadget will work”. An individual who writes four or five pages getting to that instruction will lose their audience on page 1. The repairman will appreciate the documentation that gives details about a car. The consumer wants documentation that says “turn the key, the car will start.”

Writing for the target market will require that you keep in mind the level of reading comprehension that you audience has. Writing a document for people in the US means that you are reaching out to people with an average reading level between the fourth and eighth grade. These individuals have a reading comprehension of between the fourth and sixth grade.

The way that you write documentation for a computer widget that is geared to be sold to virtually every home in the United States it will not reach your target audience if it is written for the top five to ten percent of Americans who have the reading comprehension level to understand a detailed document.

Writing a technical document that contains simple instructions with the end product being a running product will motivate customers to return to the manufacturer for products in the future. It is extremely cost effective from a marketing standpoint to write a document for repair persons who may need more detailed technical information and one for consumers who are primarily interested in putting the product together quickly and using it with ease.

Want to find out more about technical documentation, then visit Allen Wright’s site on how to choose the best technical writers for your needs.