RE: Do I have to understand the material?

[Matthew Horn <mhorn -at- macromedia -dot- com>]

AP wrote: 

>... In order to communicate to the end user, you must know what information to communicate. You have to be able to pick the correct and relevant information out of the stack. ...
> You're supposed to translate technical concepts into user-friendly text. ...

I would take this further. You aren't always gonna get a stack of stuff to understand, translate, and puke onto paper. You are going to have be an innovator yourself.

In my case, writing for a Java application server, I have to identify the emergent properties of our products.... figure out what users are going to want to do with our product and write about THAT (like innovative ways of using filters, capturing metrics, etc). Not just what our product does (like connects to web servers, etc).

If you work for a company that makes consumer-end software, consider yourself lucky and blessed and a dinosaur. But you have a lot less "fun" stuff to do.

Matthew Horn
Sr. Technical Writer
< m a c r o m e d i a >

 


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