Changing with the times: technical writing in the 21st century

Technical writers design, write, edit, and update end-user documentation such as: installation, user, administration, configuration guides, online help files, Portable Document Format (PDF) files, presentations, specifications, etc. Technical Writing in the 21st century, by necessity, is changing with the times. These changes require us to learn new skills/delivery systems that take into account new modalities and methods that end users/customers use to find and access information. We have become information designers/architects, who in order to thrive have learned new skills such as: video capture, demo creation, blog posting, and usability testing skills. This article examines the new skills we need today to succeed as technical writers, also known as information designers/architects, in the second decade of the 21st century.

Technical writing has become much more visual than in the past, when static diagrams, screenshots, and graphics were used to help you explain how products worked or needed to be installed. Traditional static documentation is still in use; however, nowadays, it is important for us to learn video skills that allow them to create video tutorials, demos with video capture tools like Captivate and Camtasia, for example. These tools allow you to create highly visual step-by-step video/audio tutorials so your target audience can easily follow the instructions/message you want to convey to them in a way that previous static user guides never could. In fact, old-style technical documentation was often little used, if at all; because it was difficult to locate the information that users needed. With the transition to video/audio tools solidly underway and the advent and implementation of Web 2.0 social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and video-sharing sites have changed the way messages move across the Internet. And with it, technical writers have taken on new responsibilities as Technical Writing has increasingly moved online.

Changing with the times also means embracing blogs and other Web 2.0 social networking tools to get our message across to customers. What exactly is a blog? The word blog is the combination of two words, web and log. As Bloggers, we add comments, graphics, videos, and other information called a blog post to the Blog on a regular basis, usually weekly. At some companies, we have taken responsibility for designing and writing blog posts for our organization’s customers and responding to their feedback through blog comments. Also, at some companies we are becoming more actively involved in designing, organizing and running interactive forums where customers can join, ask questions and get answers to common problems that are less costly and time consuming than the old support method. telephone. We are evolving from our traditional role as teachers and interpreters of new product usage between developers and customers of a product to become much more involved in product architecture, usability, and testing.

Gone are the days when we would write end-user documentation and send it to customers without doing everything we could to make sure that the information customers are interested in locating is accessible and easy to use. We are currently working with application and hardware developers to ensure that customers can find the information they need in a fast and easy-to-use way. This means that we don’t just write user documentation; but participate in usability tests to help the client access the specific information they need, without scanning information that is not of interest to them. We can no longer approach our tasks as we did in the past. In order to continue to evolve and succeed, we must acquire new skills such as video capture, blogging, usability testing, and other skills that enhance and complement the established modalities of end-user documentation: user manuals, online help, implementation guides, etc The examples cited in this article are just a few of the many ways that technical writing in the 21st century is changing with the times.