Jonathan Mitchener has written an article in Engineering and Technology magazine on the interest of technology providers in creating “ecosystems”. This is the concept\u00a0of offering not just gadgets but also a range of related products and services, which can integrate seamlessly with each other in an\u00a0overall system.<\/p>\n
The poster boy for this ecosystem approach is Apple, which in recent years has introduced\u00a0the iPod, iTunes and\u00a0approved iPod accessories, as well as\u00a0the iPhone and the iPhone App Store.<\/p>\n
Each product and service improves the “user experience”, increases the overall sales and margins and creates a dominant market position. This means lots of people want to create\u00a0similar ecosystems, and\/or be part of a successful\u00a0ecosystem.<\/p>\n
So could this extend to technical authors? Could they contribute something that improves the “user experience”, increases the overall sales and margins and creates a dominant market position? Documentation is not something Apple is known to be good at providing, but you could argue documentation might\u00a0play a part – in enabling users\u00a0to make use of\u00a0all of a product’s or system’s functionality.<\/p>\n
However, for documentation to truly be\u00a0a part of a ecosystem, then surely it needs to integrate seamlessly<\/em>\u00a0with other elements in the ecosystem as well?<\/p>\n Perceiving user documentation and online Help as a function of an ecosystem – interrelated products and services working seamlessly – might change the way in which technical authors approach the issue of creating\u00a0user assistance. It could lead to organisations perceiving documentation not as a discrete “island”, \u00a0but instead as something that needs to integrate with user documentation for other components of the ecosystem. It might also lead to more content being embedded into the systems themselves – through the use of embedded Help, for example.<\/p>\n I’m not aware of anyone who is explicitly using an\u00a0“ecosystem view” of user documentation at the moment, but it could emerge in the future. Technologies such as XML, and DITA in particular, offer a way of creating\u00a0documentation in a way that makes integration with other documents possible.<\/p>\n If more companies adopt the approach of creating an ecosystem, then technical authors will need to communicate their value in the context of this approach. They will\u00a0have to ensure that what they produce is\u00a0consistent with this approach, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"