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Ellis Pratt will moderating the panel discussion “Assisting the Millennial User – Challenges and Opportunities in the Decade Ahead”, which is part of the free Adobe Day at the UAEurope Conference 2013.

There have been many developments in creating documentation systems, with the assumption that the nature of the content – the tone of voice, the writing style – should remain essentially the same.

In this session, we’ll investigate whether the tried-and-tested technical communication writing styles from past decades still make sense today.

We’ll look at the reasons why some organisations, such as Facebook, Google, HTC and Mozilla, might be “breaking the rules” in the User Assistance they provide.

We’ll also look at how structured, adaptable, intelligent content becomes even more important for organisations that do decide to move away from the traditional approach to writing user assistance.

In this presentation, we’ll look at how to plan a user documentation project when you’re working for a startup technology company. Working in this environment gives you the opportunity to work “from a clean sheet,” but it also has its own challenges of working in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment.

We’ll look at the issues around planning user documentation and the additional considerations when you are a startup. Your budget may be limited and the product or service in development may be constantly changing, so how should you work in this situation? What should you be developing, and what is the value of user documentation for a startup?

We will cover:

• What is different about working for a startup
• Lean startup strategies
• The value of user documentation for a startup and why should you provide it
• How to document in this environment
• What you should document
• What you should measure?
• What to do when budgets are limited
• What to do when there is no clear audience