Figuring Out What Your Customers Really Need  

Effective technical manuals and training meet the needs of the customer. No one will argue with that statement. But the trick is to identify the needs of the customer. This paper describes one method to focus product information development on the customer: the needs analysis survey. This methodology that is common in course development and training identifies the tasks customers perform. It also allows course developers and technical communicators to collaborate on an area that they both understand.

Brockett, Susan H. and Susan Katz. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design

Insert Clever Title Here: Creating and Using Multi-Purpose Information Blocks for Documentation and Training  

Our technical writers and course developers share several objectives. We must provide task oriented information to our customers, we create information for a variety of products, and we follow a similar information development cycle. We also spend a great deal of time re-creating the same information over and over. To make our efforts more efficient, and to creole better information for our customers, we’ve changed the way we think of information, how we initially create the information, and how we store and retrieve the information. This paper describes the methods we chose to accomplish these goals, the tools we use, and our successes, failures and frustrations.

Brockett, Susan H., James Cox, Lelanie S. Hellmer and Susan Katz. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Education