Heya, Rainer! Thanks so much for your excellent continued feedback on the style guide, this is great stuff! We are starting to get into the 'Information Design' piece, which is my favorite part....anyhow...
To this point about audience, I agree that a bit more information would help writers to get a jump-start on their audience analysis. Below, the term 'stakeholders' includes engineers, users, testers, marketers, etc. so the term can be changed to be more specific, if appropriate for our goals. I would like to keep the information in the same book for now, but that's just my opinion, let's see what others think as this discussion develops, or provide me more details about why you think this should be a separate doc. Below is a start on a list to guide a writer in user/audience analysis, let me know what you think. Write a User Analysis To clearly identify your users, do the following: Identify the jobs your audience will do with the product. Identify the knowledge, training, or experience of your audience. Identify the range of experience of your audience. Identify jobs that are unique to your audienc's environment. Identify each category of user that will use the product. Spell out the assumed knowledge and experience levels for each category of user. Write a Task Analysis To analyze your user tasks, do the following: Compile a list of all possible tasks that can be performed with the product/project. Brainstorm tasks with other stakeholders. Solicit feedback from stakeholders. Identify which category of users will perform each task. Group tasks by user category. Identify subtasks for each task. Organize tasks and subtasks into a logical order. Prioritize tasks to identify the content needed for the documentation. Thanks, Michelle >X-Original-To: docs-discuss at opensolaris.org >Delivered-To: docs-discuss at opensolaris.org >Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:40:28 PST >From: Rainer Heilke <rheilke at dragonhearth.com> >To: docs-discuss at opensolaris.org >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Subject: [docs-discuss] Audience analysis >X-BeenThere: docs-discuss at opensolaris.org >X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 >List-Id: General documentation discussion and requests to contribute documentation <docs-discuss.opensolaris.org> >List-Unsubscribe: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/docs-discuss>, <mailto:docs-discuss-request at opensolaris.org?subject=unsubscribe> >List-Archive: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/docs-discuss> >List-Post: <mailto:docs-discuss at opensolaris.org> >List-Help: <mailto:docs-discuss-request at opensolaris.org?subject=help> >List-Subscribe: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/docs-discuss>, <mailto:docs-discuss-request at opensolaris.org?subject=subscribe> > >On page 105 of the Style Guide, there is a short discussion regarding Audience Analysis. I'm thinking (and would welcome other's thoughts) that some of this may need to be rewritten. > >I'm thinking the onus will need to be on the author (no access to the Sun engineers, etc. probably). However, this suggests we may need to expand this area into a short guide discussing the types of things an author may need to think about before even starting the document. This may not be a big deal for short tutorial type articles--which can be noted in TSG, but longer, more "official" documents would need a more thorough framework to guide the author. > >Does this seem reasonable? Attainable? > >Rainer >This message posted from opensolaris.org >_______________________________________________ >docs-discuss mailing list >docs-discuss at opensolaris.org
