Finding Inspirational Bits in Medium of Technical Communication
This essay is intended to seek inspirational bits in medium of Technical communication (TC) in order to understand how TC can leverage medium into practices. TC refers to communicating about technical or specialized topics, communicating by using technology, and/or providing instructions about how to do something regardless of technicality [1]. In another word, TC is designing communication of technical information for target audience that includes transformations and constructions of necessary data from raw materials presented to information designers, as Donald A. Schon described in the end of his paper [3] that design is transformations of measurable properties of data to design qualities. As technologies advance, medium that is used by TC evolves. The evolving medium of communication cannot be ignored, as Sundstr?m et al stated in their paper that “In any design process, a medium’s properties need to be considered [4].
TC is part of experience users have during interactions with technologies. Similar to other designs, insights of users’ experience are applied to drive design and development [4]. Too often, the focus of a design project is placed on understanding users while the communication media and the technologies it uses are treated as a black box. Given various backgrounds of a TC team that can consist of developers and content experts, understanding distinctive properties of communication medium can help decide what medium to use and utilize the medium at its best to design the communication of technical contents across the team. To discover properties of medium, I would propose a simple test and try experiment that uses one example of technical content that contains a set of information types and publish it into different forms like HTML that will be later displayed on desktop and mobile platforms. The commonly used media types by TC are illustrations, web pages, help files and social media sites, startup wizards of software programs, Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool tips, and contextual help [1][2]. They usually appear in the format of PDF and markups such as HTML.
In the PDF publications, the content does not adapt to the display size. Instead, it usually shows on more than one pages on mobile devices by default. The non-adaptability of PDFs to mobile platforms can hinder people from reading information, as fonts and graphics appear in much smaller sizes on mobile screens compared to desktop screens. As explained by Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory and Practice [5], the very existence of PDF was originally intended for printing across platforms without sacrificing and changing the content presentation format, which implies the inability of PDF to adapt to different platforms. As we have progressed to the mobile-first phase, this decreases readability of the information, although the pinch function of mobile screens can help users magnify part of information displayed on mobile devices.
In comparison to the PDF, help files that appear as HTML pages are adjusted to the mobile display. As HTML presentation is controlled by CSS, it is feasible for HTML pages to adapt to mobile displays, unlike PDF presentation that is set in stone once it is created. This result of this experiment indicates that PDF is not suitable for mobile display but for a large display such as desktop, while HTML can be displayed well on the desktop and mobile thanks to adaptability. The feature of adaptability to different platforms is an inspirational bit that can be used by information designers to understand the impact that medium has on the content design. When designing for communication, if a medium is selected, the content should be tailored for the selected medium to leverage the properties. For example, the ability to display ever-changing content and its increasing capabilities to display both audio and visual content enable developing microgenres of content synonymous with the Web, such as Frequently Asked Questions and online forms [5].
Undoubtedly, there are other inspirational bits existing in medium than what have been discussed. To continue with discovering the bits for understanding of medium, the same experiment method can be applied on other media types. For example, software startup wizard and GUI tooltips.
Reference:
[1] STC, https://www.stc.org/about-stc/defining-technical-communication/
[2] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_communication
[3] Donald A. Schon, Designing as Reflective Conversation with the Materials of a Design Situation
[4] Sundstr?m, et al, Inspirational Bits Towards a Shared Understanding of the Digital Material
[5] Rachel Spilka, Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory and Practice
[6] Image Lighted DJ Board, https://www.pexels.com/photo/lighted-dj-board-164745/