#30315
When Products Become Easy to Use, What's Next for Writers?
People who follow the right trends will someday lead them. Such an opportunity now lies in the hands of technical writers, as the computer field moves toward standardized, graphical, easy-to-use interfaces.
Oram, Andrew. Boston Broadside (1991). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Documentation
#25076
Why Game Documentation is Essential to a Satisfying User Experience
Documentation and information organization are an integral part of video game construction. The video game industry may be one of the directions technical communicators will move toward in the near future.
Peterson, Martin. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Experience>User Centered Design
#30622
Write Once, Use Many: Why and How We Make Product Information Modular 
Faced with growing demand from customers for specific courses, addressing only their needs, in very short time-frames, we had to re-examine the way we worked. Patching together one-shot customized coursework was labor-intensive for a non-homogeneous and unsatisfactory result. Each new customer request required repetition of the same amount of effort. With reduced turnaround time and dwindling human resources, a solution had to be found.
McClelland, Patricia J. and Alison Bourdel. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>User Centered Design
#32144
In my work with Bumblebee I use an approach I call 'User-Guide-Driven Development,' or UGDD for short. The mechanics of UGDD is similar to that of Test-Driven Development (TDD), but before I write the test for a feature, I write a snippet of the user guide describing the feature I am about to implement.
Brolund, Daniel. Thoughts of a Goldfish (2008). Articles>Documentation>Usability>User Centered Design
#32171
If you document everything, you are giving everything an equal weight. Do that for a complex system, and you are buried in detail. In any system there are some aspects that are more important than the others, key aspects of the system that once understood, will help someone to learn more. The art in documentation is to find how to document these aspects as clearly as possible. In this you emphasize these areas, and leave the details for the code.
Fowler, Martin. Distributed Computing (1997). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Minimalism
#32349
Users Read Help Manuals Like an Encyclopedia, Not a Novel
Users turn to help to look for a specific question, just as someone consults an encyclopedia for a specific question. No one reads the entire encyclopedia/manual, nor is anyone expected to. Well-written encyclopedias allow users to find information through indexes, tables of contents, alphabetical organization, and search fields.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Help
#32540
Documenting User-Centered Design Best Practices
When initiating or expanding the role of user-centered design (UCD) in an organization, consider documenting UCD best practices as they fit within existing processes and the best practice of other areas. Such documentation communicates the role and value of UCD throughout the organization in terms familiar to your organization. Because what best practices means varies from company to company, there is no single way to do this. Here are some questions to consider.
Bachmann, Karen L. STC Proceedings (2008). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Policies and Procedures
#32824
Before you release a product, have some people use it. From these "test users" get solutions to problems, tips and knowledge that would help your real-life Users. Put that information in your User Documentation, and on your product support website.
Great Technical Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>User Centered Design
#33865
Why Bother With User Documentation in Recessionary Times?
In recessionary times, organisations should focus on getting sales from existing customers - so customer retention becomes ever more important.
Cherryleaf (2009). Articles>Documentation>Business Case>User Centered Design
#33894
Lessons Learned with Quick Reference Guides: Timing and Truth
I should never fully trust anyone on a project. I don’t mean this disrespectfully, because I work with competent, talented professionals. But no one has the full picture of how the application will truly work. The quality assurance (QA) engineer usually has the clearest picture. The program manager and project manager are often living in a slightly different world, full of a vision of how the product should work and how they expect users to interact with it, but sometimes they’re missing important nuances in the actual implementation. The interaction designer builds prototypes and assumes the developers will build them to spec, but since the prototypes are usually HTML-based, and not in Java or .NET, variances are inevitable.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Emotions
#34093
User assistance can add value to a product or Web service’s business model by influencing how deeply users adopt new features or services. As more products employ pay-as-you-go models like that of SaaS (Software as a Service), the contribution user assistance makes becomes increasingly more important.
Hughes, Michael A. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Help
#34378
User Paradox with Not Reading User Manuals
Users would save time by reading the manual, but instead they try to figure the application out themselves and then get lost/frustrated as they end up spending even more time getting up to speed with the application.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2007). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Technical Writing
#34444
Why do product manuals sound formal and stiff-upper-lipped? Why don’t users read manuals? These questions have haunted the precincts of Technical Writing for quite some time now. From what I have seen in Indian writers, I am forced to conclude that English Composition, as we were taught in school, is the culprit.
Kumar, Suman. Indus (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Rhetoric
#34587
How to Avoid Extinction as a Technical Communicator
Although there will always be a need for people to explain technical material non-technical people, Ellis Pratt said, others may be doing it instead, through the formats users prefer. To survive, technical writers may need to morph into content strategists, managing the information in a systematic way rather than merely creating it.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>User Centered Design
#34613
How To Create A FAQ Page Your Customers Will Love (And Might Even Use) 
What FAQ pages have become are elephant graveyards of non-information, the equivalent of the Miscellaneous file folder, the place where information-we-didn’t-know-where-to-put was dumped. The challenge of creating a FAQ page that customers will find useful has several aspects to it, but can be accomplished with a lot of planning and a little strategic work.
Bailie, Rahel Anne. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>FAQ
#34637
Documentation Usability: A Few Things I’ve Learned from Watching Users
Even though your customers may not read manuals, your tech support team probably does, which means someone is reading the manuals and using them to help others. But if your users find it easier to call someone, wait on hold for an agent, and then ask the agent a question rather than find the answer in the help, maybe your help materials aren’t very usable. Maybe increasing the usability of your company’s documentation could alleviate the need users feel to seek answers from another source.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Usability>User Centered Design
#34638
Changing the Rules of the Game for the Benefit of the User
In this presentation, Joe Sokohl talks about gathering user research prior to designing and implementing your help deliverables.
Sokohl, Joe. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>Audience Analysis>User Centered Design
#34711
Part of the problem in our attempt to demonstrate value is that our help deliverables look the same as they did 15 years ago, more or less. Online help and a PDF manual. It’s not a format that engages users. The web marches forward with innovation after innovation, while the technical communicators are figuratively hunched over keyboards, staring at CRT monitors, wearing 1950s horn-rimmed glasses, typing away.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#35301
What do the Users Really Want?
I have no idea what our users want. I do know they want information, and I know they want that information to be kept up to date as our product evolves and as far as those basic needs are concerned, I’m happy that we are meeting them. Beyond that I admit I’m not really that sure.
McLean, Gordon. One Man Writes (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Surveys
#35627
How Apple’s Setup Guide Shows That It Thinks Different
Seth Godin believes that everything reflects what you stand for—right down to your technical documents. Ever looked at Apple’s tech docs?
Godin, Seth. I Heart Tech Docs (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Macintosh
