Among your many talents (development, shopping, hula hooping to name a few) you’re also responsible for writing a majority of resource manuals for clients and internal process guidelines for Bluewire Media staff. One might say that you are our unofficial technical writer…

Where do you begin when first writing a reference manual?
As with any writing, it helps to start with general information and gradually become more specific.

In the case of a reference manual, I’d start with basic contact information for support, log in details, and an overview of the system to provide the user with a very basic starting point. Then start going into more detail, first about the consistent areas of the system (global navigation, common buttons etc.) and secondly, about really specific parts relevant only to that particular client.

Do you find it difficult explaining technical information to the lay person?
It can be hard, as simply replacing jargon with regular words doesn’t necessarily work. Sometimes the concept itself can be quite foreign making it very tricky to communicate even if using 10 year old English.

To illustrate, compare two explanations of a WYSIWYG editor:

Example 1
A WYSIWYG editor is a content editor that allows you to edit text, images etc and have them look how they will in the final context.

Example 2
A WYSIWYG editor allows you to update content on your website using tools similar to the basic functions of Microsoft Word. This means that you can see what the finished product will look like on the website before you hit save (and also you don’t need to know any code!).

How do you overcome this?
One of my favourite techniques is the analogy, which can help explain not just how something works but also why things happen. If you get an analogy wrong, though, it can make things even more complicated!

During your time at Bluewire Media how have your methods of writing improved /changed?
I’ve had lots of opportunities to get feedback from both colleagues and clients over the past couple of years, which has helped me discover what concepts and words the general public needs explained. It’s also helped me write instructions more clearly and even change my tack on reference manuals completely…

In what way have your made help information more accessible to clients?
The majority of the manuals I write are for content management systems. In the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with embedding the help information I write into the administration area of the system itself. This means that when a client has a problem entering content or editing something, the help information relevant to that part of the site is just a click away. So far, feedback on this technique has been positive.

How is writing a process for staff different from writing a reference guide for clients?
The main difference is the amount of background information required. Staff processes don’t need lengthy explanations or glossaries – they just launch straight into the meat of the document. I expect that the staff I am writing the process for already have the technical background necessary to understand the process.

How do you decide what processes need to be written?
Deciding what processes need writing is possibly more difficult than actually writing them! I’ve recently been doing just this for our development processes and I found the easiest way was to write a really general overview of our entire development process, then decide what parts of the process needed further explanation. I’ve created a list of required processes and am slowly making my way through them – I’m sure the list will change and/or grow as I write more.

Why go to the trouble of writing processes down? Can’t information be passed on verbally?
There’s nothing worse than wondering how to do something and thinking “I bet John Smith would have known…” if John left the company 3 months ago. Writing down processes regularly and thoroughly means that the company isn’t reliant on any one person – which lets them withstand sudden resignations or fast-tracked inductions far better.

Everything used to be passed on orally hundreds of years ago… then we invented the printing press. Now we have computers, so why look back?

I understand that you will be expanding on your technical writing skills next year. What areas of your writing do you hope to improve upon?
I’m planning on taking a technical writing course. The course focuses on communication around technical issues in general, so it’ll be useful for everything from internal processes, blog articles, help manuals and even everyday emails to clients.

Make sure you let us know how the course goes!

Stefan Sojka in his recent article ‘Just one click?’ for Nett Magazine really hit home when he said

‘If that click doesn’t do what it is supposed to, I react like a two year old who has let go of their helium balloon….’

Unless you are someone who is seriously involved with the technology it can be easy to overlook how much happens ‘behind the scenes’ of a simple click on a website.

Stefan goes on to give a blow by blow of what happens when you click the purchase button on a shopping cart. I’m sure he only brushes the surface but it is already way too complicated for me.

The article is an interesting and fun read, and certainly points out that we should all give our IT people a bit more slack. They have a lot to try and coordinate!

A big congratulations to the team at CumminsNitro!

They have just been awarded 2 Grand Prix awards at the Cannes Lions 2009 56th International Advertising Festival for their ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign.

For those of you who have been living under a rock and managed to miss the publicity that surrounded this very successful campaign, head to the Cannes Lions 2009 website to check out their awards for Public Relations and Direct Marketing.

Great job guys!

Everywhere you look at the moment people are talking about usability – making tasks easier for your users and/or clients. Whether people contact you by phone, internet or visit you directly, they want to do things in the easiest and fastest way possible.
Keeping this in mind, I am still reeling from an experience that I had with one of our suppliers this week. For an unknown reason we had an outstanding invoice so I contacted them by telephone to make a payment.
Problem #1
Billing enquiries has very cleverly been included as part of the technical support option in their automated telephone system. This meant that I was cuing with other customers who had technical problems and were going to take a lot longer than me.
Problem #2
After providing my customer reference number and explaining why I had called I was asked to provide my password. Not realizing that I would require a password to pay an invoice I had no idea what it was. The fact that I wanted to pay the company money was apparently not a good enough reason to bypass this ‘security question’. No password – no go!!
After being told that our password would be emailed to us I was to hang up and call back later.
Seriously guys…….
I may not have mentioned the name of the company here but let me tell you….in the last 2 days I have told roughly 8 people about my BAD experience.
So what am I trying to say?
Ensure that your customers can complete the tasks they need to complete quickly and efficiently! If you cannot do this you may be saying goodbye to them along with all of the potential customers who have heard the bad story.

I would like to make a confession…..technology scares me [please don’t tell anyone here in the office]. We live in a time where we are surrounded by gadgets, social media, an overload of information and yet I am one of those people who like simple, easy to use things. Don’t get me wrong I think a lot of new gadgets and technologies are cool… just don’t ask me to use or explain them.

So, late last year when I was asked to prepare a presentation about Google Analytics I had my own little nervous breakdown. I had no idea what it was let alone how to use it. Ahhhhh!

As it turns out once I started exploring, it wasn’t as scary as first appearances suggested. And in true Google style, simple explanations of reports and terms were only a click away [and not the really convoluted explanations but simple easy to understand explanations.

So what is Google Analytics?

I am currently working on a white paper as an introduction to Google Analytics. Not for experienced users but for those people like me who become nervous and frustrated when doing something new on the internet. Watch this space.