Guest post by Alyson Riley
This economy is horrendous. I promise that this will not turn out to be a negative blog post in the end, but really—we all know these are strange times, and we’re all dealing with fear, frustration, and uncertainty in varying degrees. We’ve seen massive market failure, stress on financial systems, stress on our planet’s ecosystems, and new kinds of government and business relationships. Today’s CEOs continue to lay off employees, restructure workforces, globalize, question the value of the skills in their organizations, and relentlessly seek productivity improvements. If we’re employed (and awake), we’re looking for ways to prove our value-add and ensure the future of our profession. If we’re unemployed, we’re trying to demonstrate our value proposition in ways that make sense to employers who are streamlining, stretching to do ever more with less, and living with constant pressure to deliver mission-critical contributions.
So here’s the good news. We technical communicators have a competitive edge that no other discipline can provide. One of the tried and true tools of information architecture gives technical communicators power in this new world order—power to drive change, power to determine where to deploy scarce resources to ensure high-value impact, and power to pinpoint and eliminate low-value work. That power is data! And that powerful data comes from a source that should be a part of every technical communicator’s toolkit: scenarios.
Scenarios are stories that feature people performing tasks to achieve goals. When used internally to shape content, these true stories result in data that helps us identify the content that users really want, need, and value. Scenarios help us define effective information solutions and gain buy-in from fellow stakeholders in the user experience. In addition, the data that scenarios produce can be used to challenge traditional beliefs of what “documentation” is supposed to be. Let’s purge old perceptions of help systems and product doc, and use scenarios to do so in a data-driven manner!
Beyond the important role that scenarios play in shaping information architecture, this key tool results in reliable data that business leaders can use to make sound product decisions, define product strategy, and set organizational priorities. Scenarios provide a method to scientifically identify user needs and pain points as well as requirements for the future user experience. We as technical communicators should be masters of the scenario and the keepers of real user data—trustworthy data in a harried world swamped with information noise.
So be empowered and encouraged, technical communicators! You have at your disposal proven methods for discovering user requirements, defining effective information solutions, and ensuring that our focus remains on high-impact content. You have a value-add like no other discipline around. The challenge now is to use the method wisely—to advance the quality of our work and our individual careers, as well as ensure the future of our discipline.
Is your curiosity piqued? My friend Deirdre Longo and I will be sharing our experiences with scenarios for an hour in an STC webinar on Wednesday, 17 February, at 1:00 PM EST (GMT-5). We’d love to have you join us. We’ll talk about the concepts and processes used to create effective scenarios as well as demonstrate ways to use those scenarios to define information architectures (and challenge the status quo). And of course we’d be happy to take your questions before, during, and after the webinar—just send me or Deirdre an email.
So yes, this economy is horrendous—but take heart, technical communicator! The core methods of our discipline will see us through these tough times—we just need to use them creatively and strategically to keep our focus on the things of value.