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How can we be sure our documentation is valuable?
As technical writers, we create content in the form of policy and procedure libraries, technical manuals, user's guides, job aids, software instructions and training programs. These tools are required by our employers or clients in order to satisfy regulatory requirements, support employees in performing their jobs, and ultimately, to ensure that the customer's experience is satisfactory. For example, documentation is created to ensure our customers can operate their software or hardware, or so that employees can find the answers to their customers' questions, understand product offerings, or navigate systems. These are only a few of the reasons for creating user assistance.
But how do we know if our documentation is effective or useful? As technical writers, we may be removed from our end user and not be able to gauge its value. Our documentation may be out of date, not organized effectively, or been replaced by other resources. Remaining relevant adds value to our employers and businesses.
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Usability testing
Consider enhancing your documentation through user feedback by implementing usability testing.
Although it requires some time and planning, testing your
 documentation can be extremely valuable and profitable for your company. At this year's Society for Technical Communication's Summit, there were two sessions where companies had successfully measured their user's experience with great results. There is more to testing your documentation than asking people if they can get through a procedure successfully or by having users complete a survey. Here are some tips they shared with deploying a testing strategy and measuring results:
- Start with a small project to test
- Create testing goals and scenarios
- Create usability tests
o Time to complete task
o Tasks completed correctly
o To be compared before and after content is enhanced
- Schedule time with your end user
- Gather objective and external participants for testing
- Talk to your customer! (this might be an internal user)
- Determine your customer's needs, not wants.
- Get feedback (listen, observe, interview)
- Overcome challenges; embrace negative feedback
- Collaborate, measure success
- Implement changes
- Share your results with management - gain buy-in for future tests
- Keep customers happy
Want to learn more about ideas on usability testing? Visit
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for the following upcoming conferences:
Tacoma, WA
October 14-15, 2016
Two separate sequences of education - one for design and writing and the other for tools and technologies
Las Vegas, NV
October 26 - 29, 2016
Multi-day conference for content strtategists, documentation managers, and marketing professionals.
Las Vegas, NV
March 28-30, 2017
Content strategy event for marketing and communications professionals. Learn how to scale content, leverage the technology, repurpose and reuse content, and deliver to the right person at the right time regardless of the device.
STC Summit 2017
Washington, DC
May 7-10, 2017
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