Here are the slides on “Technical writing career paths in the UK”:
Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Technical writing career paths in the UK
Reply
Tag Archives: Technical Author
New job vacancy: #4133 Technical Author, City of London, £32K-£37K DOE
This is an opportunity to join a technical writing team within a fast-growing, independent software company. Our client develops Web-based financial trading software for the world’s largest financial institutions. They have an immediate vacancy for a Technical Author with a passion for technical communication.
You will developing end-user documentation for a range of products, producing user manuals, online help and API documentation.
To which socio-economic class do Technical Authors belong?
Class is one of those aspects of life that still seems to cause a lot of fuss in the UK, and the BBC has generated a great deal of interest today with The Great British class calculator:
Traditional British social divisions of upper, middle and working class seem out of date in the 21st Century, no longer reflecting modern occupations or lifestyles.
The BBC teamed up with sociologists from leading universities to analyse the modern British class system. They surveyed more than 161,000 people and came up with a new model made up of seven groups.
The BBC Lab UK study measured economic capital – income, savings, house value – and social capital – the number and status of people someone knows. The study also measured cultural capital, defined as the extent and nature of cultural interests and activities.
The new classes are defined as: Elite, Established middle class, Technical middle class, New affluent workers, Traditional working class, Emergent service workers and the Precariat (or precarious proletariat).
So which class would Technical Authors come under? It’s likely to be Established middle class or Technical middle class, but you can test yourself on the BBC site.
See also:
How can a Technical Author find more time to write user documentation in an Agile environment?
We’ve been working on a white paper that looks at how User Assistance can be more effective and developed more effectively when you’re working in an Agile environment. The white paper should be published in the next few weeks, but here’s a sneak peek at one of the issues we discuss: the lack of time available for creating User Assistance.
Agile’s iterative release of products, and sometimes frequent changes to the functionality and the User Interface, can make it difficult to create the user documentation. The Technical Author can end up having to rework content they’ve written, delete sections on functionality that’s no longer part of the product, and add information on features that have been introduced towards the end of the project. If the Technical Author waits until the product has been completed, they can find they have very little time available for writing the user documentation.
So what can you do about this?
Continue reading
Latest Technical Author job vacancies
Here are details on the most recent vacancies we have on our books.
Our interview in AccountingWeb – “Don’t be a boring accountant: Lessons from a technical author”
Cherryleaf’s Ellis Pratt was interviewed recently for an article for AccountingWeb called Don’t be a boring accountant: Lessons from a technical author. The article has been published today.
It explores what accountants can learn from Technical Authors in how to avoid being seen as boring, whilst still maintaining their credibility.
The full article is available to registered AccountingWEB members only. It’s free to register.
Vacancy: #4127 Contract Technical Author, Manchester, £25/hr, 6 months
This is an opportunity to join a friendly team of authors, working for a large and progressive company. Our client needs a technical writer to join its team of writers who can write user guides, Help files and workbooks for scientific instruments.
You’ll need to have at least 2 year’s experience in technical writing and, ideally, a science (esp. chemistry) background. It would help if you have some experience writing standard operating procedures in a regulated environment.
You need to be skilled in using:
- Authoring tools such as Madcap Flare, RoboHelp, FrameMaker or Adobe Acrobat.
- Graphics tools such as Corel Photo-Paint, CorelDraw or PaintShop Pro.
You also need to be experienced in user-centred design writing techniques, such as user personas and task-based writing
You’ll be working on-site, at the client’s offices in South Manchester.
To apply, please email us a copy of your CV.
The future of technical documentation is more about psychology than technology
In the quest to offer better forms of user assistance, most experts in the technical communications profession propose technological solutions: using XML, intelligent and adaptive content etc. to present essentially the same type of guidance as has been provided for the past 20 years.
We believe there has been a change in the relationship between people and technology, and there needs to be a corresponding change in the relationship between people and the user documentation.
In the past, a lot of technology was unfamiliar, idiosyncratic, expensive and complex; users often became anxious when they used a product. As technology has become part of everyone’s daily lives (particularly Web and mobile applications), people’s relationship with a great deal of technology has changed.
As a consequence, for some types of products and for some types of documents, the traditional approach for technical writing is no longer appropriate.
This means Technical Authors need a better understanding of this relationship – the psychology of users – and understand how they can relate and communicate to users in context.
We are not suggesting that the traditional approach to technical writing should go away completely. We’re also not arguing against technology such as XML and DITA – these are vehicles for delivering content. We’ll still be writing user documentation for scientific equipment and financial systems in the traditional way, as these types of products fit the traditional model. However, even the documentation for these types of products can benefit from the inclusion of some psychological techniques.
Web sites such as voiceandtone.com indicate some of the changes that we are likely to see in technical documentation, but we disagree with some of the approaches suggested on this site for some types of documents, and we feel this site only scratches the surface.
There is evidence from randomised control trials that these new approaches work, although we recommend you carry out your own testing to double check it works for your users.
So having come to be belief that Technical Authors need to incorporate some new techniques into their documentation, what should happen next? One approach is to engage Cherryleaf to provide advice or write documents. In addition, you’re able to discover these techniques through our new advanced technical writing training course. However, the starting point is to recognize the change in the relationship between users and many products, and to recognize the need to change the approach to technical writing so that it’s appropriate to the situation.
The question is, do you agree?
If you need a Technical Author who has experience in using Confluence
If you need a Technical Author who has experience in using Confluence, then Cherryleaf can help. Our Projects team has skills and experience in using Confluence to create great content.
Contact us if you’d like to know more.
Here is the recording of our “Recruiting the right Technical Author” webinar
For those who were unable to attend the live event yesterday, here is the link to the recording of our webinar: Recruiting the right Technical Author.
The recording lasts 38 minutes.