In the spring I started a UX Design Course in Coursera (and will complete the certificate this month!).
And I’ve come to discover that the use of AI within the training has been captivating!
Going into this course, I had extensive experience as a Technical Writer and wanted to evolve my knowledge to include all aspects of working in user experience from research to surveys to documenting the process.
It has been a minute since I was part of academia – online or in person – so I needed to relearn some habits. One of them was studying and was intrigued to see that studying for a test on the platform included help with an AI coach. The coach would ask detailed questions and expect detailed responses.
AI Coach from Coursera Course
As an example:
AI Coach: How would you connect the features and benefits of a product with the needs of its users?
Me: Connecting the features and benefits of a product with the needs of its users involves understanding the specific needs and pain points of the target audience and then demonstrating how the product’s features directly address those needs. It’s about showing the value that the product brings to the users.
AI Coach: Interesting response! While creating a value proposition is indeed important, let’s dive a bit deeper. Product features are the specific characteristics or functionalities of a product. They describe what the product can do or what it includes. On the other hand, product benefits are the positive outcomes or advantages that users gain from using the product. They answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” or “How does this product improve my life or solve my problem?”
Me: I’m ready for my test!
The AI Coach helps in so many ways to expand on what’s in the lesson and also in doing test preparation. It can assist with:
In-depth review of the module
Encourage critical thinking
Ask for detailed responses
Provided harder test questions (than the actual test)
In what unexpected ways has AI helped you think more critically and encouraged more learning options?
Starting out in software documentation, the entire team would sit around a table and talk with the PM and divvy out sections of the project. Then we’d break off and scatter to do the work. My work entailed jumping around to those who held all legacy knowledge and expanding wisdom – the subject matter expert (SME). Reaching this group with their full schedules and meetings required a lot of flexibility in scheduling and note taking. Though I am an extrovert, and interviewing was one of my favorite parts of my job, I did wonder if taking notes and outlining along with any specific details that may have been missed while I was simultaneously writing and listening could have been streamlined.
My wishes were granted. Though artificial intelligence has been around for a while, it’s only been within the last year that it’s really taken off. Advanced transcription tools and platforms designed for remote interviews have become available on a large scale. Along with the benefit of tools and platforms, attitudes about various perspectives and the inclusion of multiple voices have made the creation of products that serve everyone more accessible.
New Tools
AI-driven transcription and analysis tools have become more sophisticated, allowing for real-time transcription with higher accuracy. Tools like Dialpad and Otter.io provide either in-platform or ad-in services that offer advanced features like sentiment analysis and keyword extraction. These tools provide deeper insights from interviews. Greater detail in the transcripts can aid technical writers when adding more specific information to the documentation.
Reaching Out…Remotely
During most of my freelance work, I became used to the video conference platforms (but I know everyone got a crash course in 2020!). Being familiar with Zoom or Microsoft Teams allowed me to easily interview SMEs from anywhere. Now with the shift towards remote and hybrid work environments having accelerated, making virtual SME interviews more common. Platforms and tools have been specifically designed or updated for remote interviews, now offering better video and audio quality, seamless scheduling, and integrated collaboration features. Google Meet and Zoom both have collaboration and scheduling options.
Options to include chats to interview SMEs have also been considered.
Listening to Everyone
Within the last few years, there has been an increased emphasis on ensuring diverse and inclusive representation in SME interviews. Organizations are more conscious about involving a wider range of experts from different backgrounds, ensuring a broader spectrum of perspectives and experiences are documented. Interviews can be extended to the employees outside the usual user-group to test the software and review the documentation. User acceptance testing of the software may include an evaluation of the documentation and provide a different perspective on written assumptions.
Through my experience with security assessments, it was most often policies that prevented the controls from being fully implemented. Documentation, like policies, that focuses on protecting personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure can assist with addressing any gaps in security plans.
Policy sets expectations clearly.
Policy addresses how data is collected, used, and protected. Stakeholders, users, and employees can be made aware of the security risks through review and acknowledgement of these policies.
What should be the first policies?
Organizations need to begin with general policies that address privacy, data retention, and access control. Guidelines that state how data is to be collected, used, and protected as well as how long the data should be kept will provide a basis to build other policies.
Topics include:
Encryption to protect data in transit and at rest
Limiting access to authorized personnel
Using role-based access controls
Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Set standards around user passwords
Remove or obscure personally identifiable information (PII) to reduce risk of exposure
Data minimization to collect only necessary information for a specific purpose
Data retention
Training and Awareness
Through documenting policies, organizations can further define and create a training and awareness program to educate employees on data privacy policies, security best practices, and the importance of protecting personal information. These policies, along with any training, regularly remind employees of their responsibilities regarding data privacy and security.
Response Procedures
A breach notification policy is needed to ensure notification to affected individuals and regulatory authorities in the event of a data breach. Along with policies, procedures would need to be developed. Among these would be an incident response plan for responding to data breaches and other security incidents.
Let me just cut to the chase. I hate metrics. Or hated, I should say, but now I think I may be starting to appreciate them. Most of my career has been built around the written word, not numbers. So, there was a learning curve, even knowing Excel as well as I do!
My first foray into the world of metrics came when I started as a freelancer. I wanted to plan out my month and see how much work I needed to maintain my income. As long as I had an anchor client, and a few additional clients each month, I was reaching month’s end in the clear. This is when I learned that “what gets measured, gets managed.”
This is true not only to adjust work but also to figure out, once the documentation is written, how it’s being used and how it can be improved.
Metrics provide the basis for continuous improvement.
The areas to be measured include:
User Feedback (comments, ratings)
Productivity (documents, pages within defined timeframe)
User Engagement (page views, time on page)
Searches Topics (keywords, sentences used)
Usability (measure task completion)
Improvement Tracking (monitoring, document usage and trend reports)
Technical writers are constantly getting feedback on documentation through users, peers, and subject matter experts. Users rate and comment, and if using a content management system like Flare or RoboHelp, they can provide feedback in the application. Measurements that can be used to identify user engagement are search phrases, topics viewed, and demographic statistics such as browsers and operating system utilized.
Measuring the documentation itself is another metric.
With documentation, the time between the initial draft and publication can show the level of productivity. Writers identify how long it takes to produce a document and determine from this any inefficiencies and places where the process can be streamlined. Another metric to track is the number of documents or page count that can produced within a certain timeframe.
Improvement tracking includes monitoring, which ensures that documentation remains accurate, up-to-date and effective. Additionally, obtaining information on how often the documentation is used can provide insight into how well the processes are written. Again, with specific software systems (Madcap Flare) or platforms (ServiceNow) trend reports for detailed searches, click-through, and most viewed procedures can be reviewed. By analyzing trends over time, technical writer can identify long-term improvements and recurring issues, make data-driven decisions to enhance their documentation and enable continuous improvement in quality, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
I am greeting Artificial Intelligence into my technical writing world with open arms. Truly, it’s been the companion on my writing journey that I’ve been looking for since I started writing in the early 2000.
With this innovation, documents can be customized and written with fewer errors. I know that these options have always been possible with some current platforms (like Madcap Flare, RoboHelp, Clickhelp) and a team of subject matter experts (SME) to review. But why not let the robots be helpful assistants?
Automate Content Generation
If we can let the robots help with creating first drafts from initial SME interviews or from data that already exists and verify that the tone and style are consistent, this reduces editing and proofing time. With this, the document development life cycle could move into the second draft phase quickly and allow for greater turnaround and more timely releases.
Enhance Content Accuracy
By using AI and conducting grammar edits more effectively (think: Grammarly), it will take less time to get to the final product. Add to this that once the documentation is written and compiled, if needed, AI will translate the content for a global audience that ensures consistency and technical accuracy (like Google Translate).
Improve User Experience
AI provides users and customers with a better experience as well with interactive documentation and personalized content delivery. Additionally, these tools analyze user interactions with the documentation and identify areas of improvement where writers can expand the content to help users better understand it.
With AI taking care of the basic reviews and verification of current information, it would allow for more time for customization, learning more about the products themselves, working closer with subject matter experts and researchers, and spending time in testing new, more innovative products.
A Better Companion
Through providing efficiency, consistency, and customization using automated content generation, in-depth reviews, and the ability to improve the user experience and engagement, AI can prove to be a great fellow traveler on the road to creating more accessible documentation.
AI is designed to perform specific tasks and answer common questions based on its programming and the information it has been provided. So, at its core, the reason AI will not replace technical writers is that AI cannot think independently.
It seems that there will always be a need for writing and documentation due to the fact that technical writers prioritize understanding and underlying needs over technology itself. We are always looking for more efficient processes and approaches to convey what users need to know.
AI is a tool.
Artificial intelligence is like any other writing device, like a computer keyboard, digital notebook, or a pen and paper; it simply makes writing easier. And like past technological advances – home computers, iPads – didn’t replace writing.
However, an implement of writing cannot replace the ability to be creative, utilize experience, think critically about a project, or communicate effectively. These assets belong exclusively to human writers.
Technical Writers understand people AND process
Technical writing is still about understanding – understanding designers, and developers, and having empathy for the users.
AI will not:
Attempt to understand the process
Show feeling for those reviewing documentation
Perceive the significance of a certain piece of information
Determine which parts mean more than any other.
Technical Writers will:
Distinguish what is to be included to make user-friendly documents
Reflect the voice of the organization
Ensure consistency
Solve problems quickly regarding information
Be user advocates
Adjust to any changes
Most notably of all of these is that technical writers are adaptive. Writers can recalibrate interview questions or modify documentation as needed. When interviewing SMEs or surveying users, this adaptability is crucial to providing a product that is accessible. Technical writers have the ability to take an answer or interview question and expound upon it to pull more information from the interviewee. AI can only rely on legacy information to predict the responses.
Technical writers by their very nature excel at research, organization, and communication. Cybersecurity documentation includes all of these aspects. The main directives of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are to “identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover and aid organizations in their effort to spot, manage, and counter cybersecurity events promptly.”
I was first introduced to the NIST framework on a freelance assignment with a cybersecurity agency. I spent the next two years working with them and their clients to document the assessment process. I found the framework interesting because it could be customized based on the organization, and depending on the company, the depth of adherence depends on how strict the company wished to be with the control standards. It was that flexibility and opportunity to find the weaknesses and then create a plan to remediate those deficiencies that appealed to a documentation specialist.
Tapping into a technical writer’s innate abilities to research, organize, and communicate information, writing around this framework is a natural fit. The assessment process began with the engineer’s evaluation of internal systems and concluded with interviews to document the findings. At this point, the technical writer provides a report from the meetings for remediation steps, and any subsequent documentation (incident response, risk assessment, disaster recovery, etc.). Technical writers act as a bridge between technical experts and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring that security policies, procedures, and risks are clearly communicated.
Processes always involve documentation. Usually, policies and procedures that include complex concepts, protocols, and technologies. Additionally, it requires that each control be broken down into clear, understandable instructions. The complexity of this information requires tailoring content to different audiences, whether they are IT professionals, management, or end-users.
As a technical writer, I find assessments and cybersecurity fascinating because they are rapidly evolving fields. These fields require a documenter to learn at the same pace as well as understand the new tools and technologies which will ensure that documentation is relevant and accurate. Those with extensive experience in the technical writing fields see this constant evolution as a great challenge since they have strong research skills and can keep content current with the latest threats, technologies, and best practices.
How to hire a professional writer and where to find them
Technical Writers are important to all kinds of organizations. When you’ve updated your software, you will need a writer with a technical background to communicate that change to the users. If you want to market something new, share what charities your company now supports, or ask that readers opt-in or engage with a product or service, you need a writer.
Do YOU need a technical writer?
Yes, everyone should have one (or more). Writers lessen your workload!
You will have one fewer email, schedule meeting or project plan follow-up to communicate if you have a writer to help you and your team. Everyone could have access to meeting notes and company content documents through your internal website or wiki, if you had a writer to pull that information together.
A technical writer contractor can be bridge between project managers, engineers, and management and even those outside your organization. Writers can convey what your product does to the public, customers and stakeholders and help them to understand your business.
Professional writers can handle projects almost interchangeably because the skills start with basic English and grammar rules and expand from there. Writers know to how to ask questions and listen to the answers; they are exceptional at research and notetaking and are able to empathize with their audience.
For specific projects or when you need your users to understand how your products work and how they can best be used, technical writers can quickly learn the complexities of your systems then get the documentation to users.
Consider a few questions to ask: Do I need to convey how my products work? Do I need more comprehensive advertising? How can I get the message out about the good work my company does to create a more favorable public image?
So, do you need a technical writer? Yes, having a professional writer work with your organization will lessen your workload.
In your job description, ask the prospect to write something for you and include an email address. Have them answer specific questions (for example: What do you know about writing marketing video scripts? Give me 2 topics and a short description for each one. Or, what do you know about our open source software? Write a 1-page Getting Started Guide).
Yes, you may be bombarded by emails, but then again you may have an excellent candidate pool from which to choose.
Most writers will have websites which will showcase the type of work they do and writing samples. These are the best writers to find. Also, any with testimonials and a blog on their site will help you decide what type of writing they do and how best they can fit into your organization.
Note: Writers are not always able to share their past work as it may be proprietary to a previous client.
What not to do when hiring (and I’ve seen this firsthand!) do not approach the writers with unrealistic writing “tests” which included 500-page workbooks that require non-specific instructions like “edit this within 48 hours” (I wish I was kidding). Having a reasonable writing request means that you understand what you need from the writers and what their job will entail. The writers are interviewing your company too and though we are accustomed to learning quickly and producing quality work on the fly, consider the image you’re projecting with your “test tasks.” Understanding what you need from a writer will only help them get your copy, content and documentation to the customers quickly and efficiently.
Once you have a writer as a member of your team, you need to have an onboarding process and a communication plan.
The onboarding process should include access to:
Templates and style guides so that all of the documents, content and copy for your company is uniform.
Wiki, website or cloud storage so they have a place to share any published work with team members or clients
Business processes for specific guidelines to how your company does business
Work with the new writer to create a communication plan that details:
Preferred methods of contact – Video conference, Slack, Teams, text or email, etc.
Names and contact information for subject matter experts and key personnel
What hours are appropriate and within what timeframe can you expect a response (for example, email will be answered within 1 hour between 9am and 3pm, Monday – Friday)
Depending on your organization and the type of work you do, a writer can improve your business processes, bring more traffic to your website, increase your company’s income, help your users understand the products better and reduce customer support calls.
After you consider what you would like to improve in your business, do you want to find a writer who can help you achieve your goals?
Hyper Writer provides business writing services and adds energy to any writing projects. Check out my portfolio and review the testimonials from previous companies.
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