Work Patterns of Technical Communication

Overview
The work patterns of technical communication are practices, skills, and responsibilities that shape modern technical communication work.[1] Technical communication scholars identify three major work trends: information design, user advocacy, and content and community management. These work patterns are associated with fields that overlap with technical communication, such as user-experience (UX) design. Technical communication workplaces overwhelmingly require knowledge of these work patterns in addition to writing skills

Origins
Present work patterns of technical communication emerged during the late 20th-century shift toward an “information economy.”[2] This term describes an economy in which information is the most valuable commodity. Systemic changes in work settings caused this shift, most notably the rise of telecommunications: phones, faxes, and Internet. Workers now communicate across boundaries of organizations, settings, activities, trades, and publics.

Under the information economy, networks rather than hierarchies structure most organizations. Networks rely on distributed work: a knowledge-based unification of work practices traditionally “separated by time, space, organizations, and objectives.”

Technical communication emerged as a specialized field under the information economy. Previously, organizations wrote memos, manuals, and other technical documents to supplement products, services, and work. Technical communication degrees and proliferation of information technology distinguished the field. Rhetorical expertise helps technical communicators negotiate with stakeholders: networks of actors that their information products influence (e.g. customers, employees, shareholders, communities). Rhetoric also enables technical communicators to navigate dynamic work patterns.

Writing career paths Technical communicators no longer exclusively write.[3] Previously, writers individually crafted self-contained texts. Distributed work has transformed writing work so that texts are constantly-changing assemblages of existing texts. Additionally, project management systems reconcile differences between individual writing styles. Technical communicators now specialize in rhetoric and decision-making rather than mutable tools and technologies.

Career paths reflect and recreate technical communicators’ specialization shift from writing to cross-disciplinary work patterns. In most organizations, junior technical communicators write and design information products. Senior technical communicators determine information products’ needs by designing systems, coordinating with clients, and performing analysis.

Junior technical communication work

Senior technical communication work

Writing text

Transferring material from paper to online

Quality-assurance testing products (e.g. checking links)

Writing software maintenance changes

Analyzing effects of system changes on existing texts

Designing and manipulating graphics

Defining text components and relationships

Outlining high-level documents

Analyzing audiences and tasks

Setting design standards (e.g. style guides)

Teaching standard writing techniques

Developing user personas or profiles

Defining customer/user needs

Designing metadata

Planning software maintenance changes

Information design Information design is a field dedicated to visually displaying texts, graphics, and other information. The subfield of document design has traditionally been a component of technical writing. Since distributed work changed the form of technical documents, practitioners have broadened their applications of information design. Technical communicators now assemble dynamic texts from disparate sources, displaying them in multiple formats for multiple audiences.[1]

Textual coordination Writing in technical communication now involves transforming multiple texts, images, and other information into new texts.[4] Textual coordination requires technical communicators to gather information from subject matter experts (SMEs). They transform information through reuse or pastiche of an organization’s preexisting texts, based on work objectives. Information technologies store, display, and generate texts used in textual coordination. In single-sourcing environments, writers may consult hundreds of texts in a database within a single workday. Technical communicators require rhetorical expertise to seamlessly weave reused texts into new documents.

Multimodality Technical communicators produce information easily transferable to new genres and media.[1] Multimodal texts combine modes of communication such as language, visuals, audio, motion, and space.

Multimodal composition relies on textual coordination and user-centered design to determine combinations of information and formats that meet user needs. Technical communicators require knowledge of how and when to create media such as videos, websites, and diagrams.

User advocacy User advocacy is a UX design practice with applications in technical communication.[1] User advocacy is a UX design practice with applications in technical communication. It is the representation of user interests in writing, design, and other decisions. User advocates test and redesign information products in response to user needs, wants, and goals. Effective information products meet the following ideals:

Usable: Designs facilitate safe, easy, intuitive use

Useful: Designs fill user needs invented through user profiles and usability testing

Compelling: Designs persuade users to engage with products

User experience and user-centered design methods User advocacy allows stakeholders to understand the value of technical communication work.[5] User-experience and user-centered design methods allow them to promote continuous improvements of products.

Profiles and personas of user identities drive user advocacy. They determine user wants, needs, behaviors, and values based on qualitative and quantitative information. Measuring user behavior, interacting with them, and rhetorically analyzing needs all provide data for user personas. Web 2.0 allows user advocates to analyze an abundance of user-generated content such as reviews, forums, and social media. They may survey and interface with users directly through information technologies.

Usability testing provides data to refine user personas and support user-centered design. It involves observing or measuring users’ interactions with products to determine ease of use. Usability testing for information products focuses on users’ pathways and work processes: where and how easily they can find information. Resulting data helps stakeholders align user needs with organizational goals.

User-centered design is the end goal of user advocacy. It reconciles design choices with user needs as determined by profiles and usability testing. Traditional product-based design focuses on established formats at the possible expense of user experience. By communicating user needs, user advocates help stakeholders identify problems before implementing solutions.

User advocacy implements basic UX and user-centered design practices. Technical communicators build user identities using data on user behavior and direct feedback on user needs. They gather data from usability testing and qualitative assessments of user-generated content. Technical communicators align user needs with organizational goals by asking subject matter experts how users would access their information. Identifying problems before solutions is a guiding principle of user advocacy

Risk communication Risk communication is a user advocacy subfield concerned with mitigating product or environmental risks.[6] Under the product-based economy, it has been distinct from risk assessment: scientific quantification of risks. Risk assessment has traditionally involved hierarchical, one-way communication between subject matter experts and publics or users.

Under the information economy, risk communication is an information network. User advocates mediate between experts and publics by representing user perceptions of risks. Publics and product users have access to information not immediately apparent to risk assessors. Measuring this information, technical communicators help experts refine generalized user profiles with data.

Content and community management Senior technical communicators often act as content and community managers.[1] They oversee and assess writing produced within an organization to determine the needs of information products. Content and community management requires collaboration with teams through information technology.

Single-sourcing Single-sourcing is a system of publishing the same source texts in multiple formats and locations.[7] Technical communicators create “evergreen” content (e.g. mission statements) for easy reuse and editing according to materials’ genres and audiences. Editing single-source content changes it across materials. Content management systems (CMS) display, store, and format content to facilitate single-sourcing.

Scholarly debates within technical communication have regarded CMS automation as a threat to employment. William Hart-Davidson provides a contrary perspective, citing rhetorical expertise:

From today’s academic programs, most technical communicators do receive training, not in “how to write,” but rather in how to perceive writing as a social and cultural practice and in how to take an inquiry-based, problem-solving approach to understand this practice in particular contexts. But managers do need to recognize the following: that writing needs to assume a high status in corporate work, and be viewed as a critical means to just about every organizational end.

Single-sourcing has expanded technical communicators’ roles from creation to management of content. Based on roles, technical communicators may make texts, manage information, or design and manage workflows.

Fig. 2: User advocacy cycles through three main UX design practices.

Fig. 1: Word clouds are an example of multimodal text.

Fig. 3: WordPress is a popular open-source CMS.

Text creation

Workdays of writers, document designers, and information designers involve:

Information management

Workdays of information architects, editors, interaction designers, and architect curators involve:

Workflow management

Workdays of managers, team leaders, training consultants, field researchers, and client liaisons involve:

Analyzing rhetoric

Analyzing audiences

Implementing user-centered design

Testing usability

Developing design genres

Auditing content

Managing information

Developing semantic markup

Designing user environments

Performing contextual inquiry

Analyzing work processes

Modeling tasks

Visualizing workflow

Writing stewardship Technical communicators facilitate writing within organizations.[8] Under an information economy, all fields involve writing. Writing specialists coordinate with subject-matter experts through “boundary-crossing”: cross-disciplinary communication in team projects.

Boundary-crossing relies on effective display, representation, and assembly of information across communities. Teams make work accessible, express work legibly, and reuse, revise, and recombine work into unified contributions.

Display practices

Representation practices

Assembly practices

Email team members on project updates

Publish status information on project management systems

Maintain project logs

Mark completed and upcoming milestones on calendars

Display work processes through common genres (e.g. memos, slides, diagrams)

Share notes from team meetings

Maintain role descriptions for projects

Perform textual coordination (reuse and pastiche)

Notify teams of simple edits and communicate about complicated edits

Review and revise information contributions

Compose and store templates of shared genres

Boundaries between communities may still limit communication between them. Technical communicators may sacrifice individual authorship in collaborative work. Unlike translation of complex information for end-users, legibility may compromise nuance for teams uneducated on each other’s fields. Effective boundary-crossing balances communication with individual teams’ needs.