Summary of the findings from our 2016 technical communications survey

We asked Technical Authors to complete a survey into the issues and challenges they face in 2016 and beyond. There were four main themes that stood out: Issues around working in an Agile environment. A need to develop skills in creating training screencasts. This included how to use tools, structuring and presenting content, and the ideal… Read more »

Do you need DITA?

Judging by Social Media last week, there were many strong opinions at the tekom tcworld conference towards the DITA authoring standard and the associated tools. It seemed, as the philosopher Swift once said, “Haters gonna hate”, and, by inference, “Hypers gonna hype”. Eliot Kimber provided an interesting summary in a post to the DITA users group forum (Trip… Read more »

Mankind – overcomplicating products for 1.8 million years

In the radio series, A History of the World in 100 Objects, Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, described the oldest man-made object in the museum – the Olduvai stone chopping tool. This was made approximately 1.8 million years ago in Tanzania, where the first humans originated. MacGregor explained the tool has more than six chippings that sharpened… Read more »

A technical communication user’s hierarchy of needs

At the TCUK 2015 conference, Rachel Johnston mentioned the idea of a content maturity model. We thought we’d take this idea and ask: Could we develop a model that illustrates a hierarchy of needs for users of technical communication (and in particular, User Assistance)? A model of what? We suggest calling this model a technical communication user’s hierarchy of needs…. Read more »

Reflections on the TCUK15 conference

I was one of the presenters at last week’s Technical Communication UK 2015 (TCUK) conference. TCUK is the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators’ (ISTC’s) annual conference for everyone involved in writing, editing, illustrating, delivering and publishing technical information. It’s an opportunity for Technical Communicators from the UK and mainland Europe to meet up and mingle,… Read more »