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by Debbie Wiles
Technical. Technology. High-tech. Low-tech. Tech stocks. Technical wiz. Technophobe. Technology-challenged. Technical field. Technical school. Technical college. Technical skills. Technical writing?
No wonder the public doesn't understand what we do. We've been laden with an over-used, watered-down term that has been so broadly applied in multitudes of contexts that it has little real meaning now.
I've been in technical communication for many years – 20 to be exact. It took my family about half of those years to understand what I do. Friends at church ask every now and then, but they quickly forget. It's that darn buzzword – "technical." It's like a mental stop sign to the average person. Any comprehension that I'm a writer – a communicator – is somehow stunted by the vast incomprehensible aura of that term.
A few years ago, I stopped letting that deter me. After all, I'm a communicator, right? Word choice is my specialty. I'm not going to let some abused term stop me from getting through to my public. So I found a way around this dialectic roadblock. I define my field as it relates to them. It goes something like this:
"You know that VCR you have at home? It came with a set of instructions, right? Or maybe a user manual? I wrote that. Well, not that manual exactly, but that's what I do. I write all of those instructions that come with the products you buy. Sometimes I write instructions on how you should function at work. You know, like your company policies and procedures. And I write how you should use your computer to do your job. I write how to do things safely so that you don't get hurt, and so that you don't hurt anyone else. Most of the time, I explain complicated things so that you can understand them better."
"How do I do that? I must be really smart? No. Not really. My job does take special skills and at least an average level of intelligence. But I depend on a lot of other folks to do my job. In order to write how to use that VCR, I have to talk to the people who designed it to start with, and to the engineers who built it. I have to find out what the support people say you should do if it malfunctions. I also have to work with artists who draw all of the illustrations and diagrams. Those instructions would be hard to follow without the pictures, right?"
"I suppose you could say I'm like a translator. I listen to technical people explain how something works, and then I translate that into everyday language that you and I can understand."
"To do my job, I have to do a lot more than just write the instructions. I have to figure out how to give you those instructions. I have to decide whether you'll need a printed copy or will read it on a computer, whether it should come to you as a CD-ROM, or whether you should look it up on an internet website. Then, I have to design the way it will look to you, and think about how you'll actually interact with the instructions. I have to think about how much time you'll need to use my instructions, and what your environment may be like. I even have to test my instructions on people just like you so they can tell me what I need to explain better or clarify. So really, what I do is all about you and for you."
Okay. I'll be honest. I don't really say all of that. I've obviously embellished for the benefit of the argument. But you get my point? As technical communicators, our jobs involve many tasks that require an array of skills. But the foremost skill in our arsenal is an understanding of and ability to communicate with the end user.
Perhaps we really should just change our titles to "user advocate." After all, everything we do is on their behalf. It's all about the user.