Applying "mass customisation" manufacturing principles to solve technical communication problems
1 February, 2005 By Yves Rombauts,Trisoft. Contact us if you would like a PDF version of this article.
The fundamental trade-off between re-usable and customized communication
Do more, faster and with less money
Today, technical communication departments face the challenge of coping with a relentless increase in the amount of technical documentation they have to produce. Indeed, as organisations accelerate the pace of new product launches in response to changing market and competitive forces, so technical authors must produce more content, more quickly.
In addition, users are not a uniform group. They have different product knowledge, different backgrounds and they may have different reasons for using the product. As such, they need specific, personalized documentation rather than a standard one-size-fits-all document. As companies expand their product offering into new markets and strive to broaden the product offering and stretch the lifecycle of existing products, so the producers of the technical information must manage, simultaneously, more than one edition of their documents.
Globalization intensifies the burden even more, with their associated translation and localization requirements. Simultaneously, technical communication managers have to combine this ever-increasing workload with a constant pressure to cut costs: "Do more, faster and with less money" is today high on the agenda of every technical communication manager.
Avoiding writing the same information twice
In order to cope with the intensifying burden, many documentation managers have realized that it makes sense to avoid writing the same information twice. They need to promote re-use of existing content.
Instead of writing lengthy singular documents, technical authors have started to break down their document into pieces or modules, which they then aim to re-use within different documents. This works well, provided that these modules are written in a way that makes them applicable for a broad set of purposes.
For example, to write a module on a car dashboard that is applicable to several car models, the author should describe all the possible dashboard options. The generic module can be deployed in every manual. No matter which car models or options are concerned, the relevant explanation is available somewhere in the document.
Weaknesses in re-using content
This approach allows the technical authors to maximize the re-use of content and helps them cope with the increasing volume of technical communication. However, it does not provide the ultimate consumer of the information with a workable solution.
Consumers then face the burden of searching and scanning through lots of information that is often irrelevant to their product - they simply do not have every option included in the documentation. Imagine the frustration you experience when you have to program a DVD recorder for the first time using a manual that provides lengthy explanations on buttons and functionality that are simply not available on the product at hand.
Things get even worse if that product is an industrial product, such as a machine or truck, where up-time is critical. In these cases, the repair engineers should have specific information at hand for the product they are dealing, so they don't waste any time searching through irrelevant information.
The trade-off
So, today, organizations face a fundamental trade-off between re-usable and customized communication: either they produce standardized, easy to re-use modules which are not customer specific or they produce specific information modules which are not suited for re-use. Illustration 1 depicts this trade-off.
Next : Breaking the trade-off: adopting the trend in manufacturing
Let us know what you think
We welcome your comments and thoughts on this article.