Goal-oriented documentation is effective documentation. In this article, we’ll look at how to identify your users’ goals and create content that meets them.
Go ahead: ask them!
The first step in identifying what your users’ goals and want from your documentation is to ask them! Really! Take a direct approach and formulate open-ended questions like:
- What kind of support do you need for your use?
- What challenges do you come across in using our product or service?
- What information have you looked for but couldn’t find in current documentation?
- What additional information do you need to use our product or service more effectively?
When you don’t have direct access to the users of your product or service, ask those who are as close as you can get, like distributors, sales people or customer service representatives, for instance. You might even ask these players to specifically query your clients for you.
Putting the pieces together
Once you’ve collected enough data, you’ll need to do a bit of summarizing. Which users’ goals are expressed repeatedly? Which are essentially the same even if they’ve been phrased differently? (Sometimes informants will identify the same goals, but from different angles or with different end uses).
One at a time, please!
Now that you have clearly listed the users’ goals your documentation must address, it’s time to define your topics. In short, each goal will become one topic. Sometimes it will be necessary to divide broad goals into sections and address these with multiple topics.
Exactly how you write your topics will depend on the type of goal you’ll be addressing. Is your topic a:
- Concept: How something works
- Reference: Technical information
- Task: How-to procedures
Double-check that you understand your users’ needs enough to assign their goals to one of these three categories. After all, identifying which need is best met by which topic type is key to creating effective documentation.
A prototype in time saves nine…
Now that you’ve defined your users’ goals, start writing! It’s a good idea to start by creating a short prototype document based on the information you’ve collected. It will be easy to go back to your informants, with this sample in hand, and validate that your approach truly meets your users’ needs. This reduces the stakes and makes it easy to tweak or even completely reorient your documentation before you’ve invested much time or money in full-out production. This step can be simple, but don’t forget to ask basic questions like:
- Do you like it?
- Do you find it useful?
- Is it accessible and easy to use in your work?
- In other words: Does our documentation meet your needs?
Green light! Writing for your users’ goals
Congratulations! Now all that’s left is drafting your full-length document! As you know, effective documentation is documentation that meets your users’ needs, whatever those may be. When your documentation is goal-oriented, users will have an easier time appropriating and using your product. After all, it helps them do what needs doing! Not bad for a bit of legwork, wouldn’t you say?