Now published in ISTC Communicator: How do You Design for Findability?
Many technical communicators invest a lot of effort into designing for findability, yet find themselves struggling with information architecture itself: What type of information should be organized, and in which manual? How should content be structured in each manual?
To relieve the struggle of figuring out what information to write and how to organize it, one must begin by understanding a single fundamental concept: information need.
What technical communicators do, in the most basic sense, is satisfy information needs. A user has an information need if they lack sufficient knowledge on a given topic. But who decides when a user doesn’t have enough knowledge? This depends on how you define an information need in the first place.
In the summer 2015 edition of ISTC Communicator, the award winning UK journal for technical communication and information design, I offer tips on designing end user assistance, and helping users find what they are looking for. I begin by defining the concept of information need in two ways, and then discuss how the information design task differs depending on which approach is taken.