Effective Technical Documentation Tips

Technical writing is an art of explaining a complex technical concept in an comprehensible manner. Effective technical documentation requires clear analysis of certain critical concepts.

 

 This post details you about those concepts which helps you to establish an effective technical document.

Audience analysis is a major factor to be considered while you write a document. Audience are the ultimate end users of your documents. 

The way you write the documents should be precise and user friendly. It should convey the 

information perfectly such that , the user must feel as if being guided by a support person.

Such an impact on the user, shows that your documentation has met the needs of the user.

So, two things play a vital role in order to prepare a good documentation. 

Firstly you must analyze your audience and plan accordingly. Secondly, you must give documents in a brief manner.

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

Try to sort out your audience before you start the documentation. Examine their needs. 

For example if the user is completely new to the application, then you need to provide the document from the scratch. Or if the user is a person who has already been working on that application, then you need to make the document as per the requirement alone. 

But such documents require or are used only during rare scenarios.

In general, you would be in a situation to prepare documents for the users who stay in intermediate position of the above mentioned types of user. That is, the users would have partial hands on experience regarding the product but not to the fullest. 

Preparing documentations to such users acts as a big challenge.

So, while writing a document keep in mind that the user has knowledge on many products except this product. This will help you to prepare document in a better way.  Give every detail about the product in a precis manner.

BRIEF DOCUMENTATION

Nowadays, nobody is interested to read a lot in order to gain knowledge about an application. Everyone likes to understand things easily in a short span of time without taking the risk of reading pages of a huge book/manual.

Try to give your document in a brief manner. This will engage the user in learning the application easily thus reducing the cause of confusion. 

REVIEW

Reading a product’s document is generally an annoying job for the users.

So, it is essential that you prepare the document without any errors. The most common errors that happen in documentation are;

• Spelling mistakes
• Grammatical Errors
• Improper sentence construction
• No correlation among two sentences
• High usage of technical jargon.

These errors are common, since even an experienced writer can do such errors. These kind of common errors has the tendency of irritating the user thus increasing his/her pain in reading the document.

As soon as you complete documentation, it is mandatory to review the document completely to avoid the above mentioned errors.

Do not use complex sentences in future/past tenses, which may lead the user to get confused. Always remember to use “Simple Present Tense” while writing a document.

LOOK AND FEEL

Give your document a professional look with correct usage of font colours, thus making it pleasant for the user to read. Do not opt for bright flashy font colours for headings.

Make sure that the alignment, navigation section, headers, footers, headings and paginations are done in a perfect way.

Neat, simple and clear documentations always win the user’s heart, since he/she becomes comfortable while learning the document.

Our job is to provide a “Help Document” which makes the user to understand the product in a much better way. So, detailed analysis and implementation of every above mentioned concepts will result in a good supportive document for the user.