New Abstract Writer: The Four Dimensions Of Your Person/reader
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- November 2nd, 2009 |
- Comments
OVERVIEW
To create an effective Person Document, the writer must know who he/she is writing for. This article presents four dimensions (Skills, Attitude, Knowledge and Experience) for describing the Person of your product (your Documentation Reader), and how to build a Persona that turns your generic Person into an almost-real person. The article stresses the need to actually Consume this information when structuring and writing your Person Document.
GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR Person
The marketing department or product development group should be able to tell you who the intended Person of the product is. (If they cannot, so the product is in big ail.) Ask them to provide you with a complete description of the Person. Ask them if their description can be make less exact (requiring fewer skills, ect.) and thusly be applicable for a wider audience. Ask them how careful they are of their intended Users.
Ask them if they created a “Persona” (accompany below) to design the product. If so, ask them for the description of that Persona.
We will consume this information to analyze your Person in four dimensions. We will so re-build the ideal Person into an almost-real person, who you can consume to help design and compose your Person Document.
Timing: My estimate is that if the communication paths between you and the marketing and development teams are effective, so you should be able to complete this broadcast of stairs in a few hours cover various days. This description of your Person/Reader is an essential element in structuring and writing your Person Document.
THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF YOUR Person (Reader of your Document)
Four dimensions define your Person/Reader. These dimensions are:
* Skills
What skills do you assume that your Reader must have in order to believe your Person Document? (These are the skills that you assume that they have when they START to read your Person Document… not the ones that you will instruct them in the Person Document.)
In a classic example of failure, a company that taught code programming did not choose that its students had to know how to consume a particular computer morpheme processor. As a result, students exhausted 80% of the class time learning how to consume the morpheme processor, rather than learning to compose programs. The class was a failure.
List the skills that you expect your Reader to have.
* Attitude
Your Reader’s attitude is almost always a combination of anger (impatience at having to read this block instead of exploitation the product), and fear (something is not employed the artifact your Reader expects it to). Compose with compassion for your Reader. Are thither other attitudes that may affect how your Reader uses the product and your documentation?
* Knowledge
What information do you expect the Reader to have when they read your Person Document? Is thither something that you expect your readers to believe or to have to figure out for themselves? If thither are much items, so you should tell your Reader where to get the needed background information.
* Experience
Skills plus practice, yields experience. Are thither any experiences that you expect your Readers to have, so that they can believe how to consume the product or believe what you are writing? BEWARE of your Readers’ experiences that may negatively affect how they consume your product. One example is a product that radically changes the artifact that the Person currently does things. Devote any area in your Person Document to overcoming these problematic experiences.
Compose FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR READER
These four dimensions spell the morpheme “SAKE.” This reminds us to compose for the SAKE of our Readers. You consume these four dimensions when generating the topics for your Person Document, as advantageously as reviewing the material that you have written. These are topics for other articles in this “New Abstract Writer” broadcast.
Make careful that you tell your Reader about any SAKE assumptions that you make about them. Thusly if you assume them to have a primary ability, much as “welding steel” so tell them your assumption early in the Person Document. If possible, tell them where they can get the background SAKE items that they might need. For example, if you assumed that your Reader has the ability to identify a certain bird, so tell them were to learn to identify that bird (perhaps with a link or reference to a birding authority).
You deprivation to avoid situations like the one in the example above: the unexpressed requirement for knowing a circumstantial morpheme processor that ruined a programming class. Is the assumption that everybody knew how to consume that esoteric morpheme processor a reasonable one? The course developers should have checked with their sales department, since they oversubscribed the course to students who could not possibly have known about that esoteric morpheme processor.
You really must clearly country (early in your Person Document) any out of the ordinary assumptions that you make about your Reader.
YOUR READER AS A REAL PERSON
From the SAKE dimensions, and from the descriptions of the typical Person of the product that you got from the marketing or development teams, you will create a real-as-possible person to represent your typical Person. Much a representation is called a Persona in the product development industry. The Persona is also your Person Document Reader.
If the marketing and development teams consume a Persona, and they provided a description to you, so consume their Persona. You may have to add any description thereto.
If you have to create a Persona, follow these stairs (overview):
1. Imagine the generic Person of your product.
2. Focus on this Person. Describe the Person. Entertain his/her background, education, family, hobbies, interests. The goal is to make your generic Person as concrete as possible.
3. Perhaps give the Person a name, and even drop a minute or cardinal to find a photograph of this Persona.
4. Evaluate for yourself if this Persona is a good representation of the Person. Make changes as necessary.
Entertain how the Persona got your product (for example, did they purchase it, did it come bundled with another product, was it a gift, etc.). Entertain what they are most likely to deprivation to do with your product.
Later we will consume the Persona to help define the topics of the Person Document, and to help you compose the actual matter.
CHECK
Once you have generated the SAKE items and the Persona, compose them out, and let members of the product and marketing teams check them for accuracy. “Accuracy” means “how closely your Persona coincides with their (product and marketing teams) analyze of the product’s Person.” Discuss these points and make modifications as needed.
Exploitation YOUR READER
Regrettably most courses and books about abstract writing act here in their instructions about “knowing your Reader.” These courses and books expect you simply to keep your Reader in mind when you compose.
But you can and should do much more with the description of your Reader. The Persona will help you artifact the information in the overall Person Document; it will also help you compose each of the topics.
The SAKE dimensions will help you as you revise your writing. Here the SAKE dimensions will
* help you avoid exploitation language your Reader might not believe, and
* help you avoid jumps in your writing that your Reader will not be able to make.
Other articles in the “New Abstract Writer” broadcast will describe how to consume your Persona and SAKE dimensions to design and compose your Person Document. Accompany the “Resources” or “Author Information” area of this article to find links to related articles.