This document discusses how technical communicators can create meaningful documentation by understanding how users derive meaning. It explains that meaning allows people to understand why information is relevant and know what to do with it. However, meaning fails in technical communication when the message, conventions, and media are unclear to the user. People create meaning by matching new situations to their existing mental models, which are shaped by past experiences. The document recommends that technical communicators understand users' mental models, provide multiple paths for completing tasks, and focus on processes rather than products to create documentation that is meaningful for users.

1. ADDICTED TO MEANING
HOW GOOD TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION
IS LIKE BAD MAGIC TRICKS
Kai Weber
@techwriterkai
#tcworld12 - 23 October 2012

2. PROGRAM
Intro: Who am I and what do I know?
1. What is meaning…
… and why should technical communicators care?
2. How does meaning work in communication…
… and why does it still fail in tech comm?
Semiotics
3. How and why we create meaning…
… and how to create meaningful documentation?
Mental models

3. WHO AM I AND WHAT DO I KNOW?

4. WHAT IS MEANING?
Wisdom Nothing lasts...
Knowledge Used to be File menu
Information Open, Save, Print
Data Office 2007

5. WHAT IS MEANING?
Wisdom Nothing lasts...
MEANING
Knowledge Used to be File menu
Information Open, Save, Print
Data Office 2007

6. WHAT IS MEANING?
 Can be in information, more valuable in knowledge
 Allows us to “connect the dots”
 Answers “why should I care?” and “what do I do?”
 Turns information into relevant & applicable knowledge

7. WHY SHOULD TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS CARE?
It’s what we do:
Turn information into relevant & applicable knowledge
Proof in tech comm principles & methods:
 Know your audience!
… so documentation is relevant to reader
 Task-oriented documentation
…so documentation is applicable in situation

8. HOW MEANING WORKS IN COMMUNICATION
Omits meaning!
 Shannon & Weaver (1949) – process theory

9. HOW MEANING WORKS IN COMMUNICATION
Communication:
 Production and exchange of meanings…
 … by people interacting with messages…
 … in cultural contexts.
 Fiske (1990) – semiotics

10. HOW MEANING WORKS IN COMMUNICATION
Message: “Signs”
Conventions: “Codes”
Sender Receiver
Media: “Channels”
Culture: “Context”
 Fiske (1990) – semiotics

11. HOW MEANING WORKS IN COMMUNICATION
Semiotics Tech Comm
diagnoses problems offers solutions
Represent “stuff” Definitions clarify with
Message: “Signs”
arbitrarily images and glossaries
Include or exclude Language standards
Conventions: “Codes”
social or ethnic groups ensure accessibility
Allow or restrict Social media invite
Media: “Channels”
feedback collaboration

12. WHY DOES MEANING FAIL IN TECH COMM?
 Aren’t message, conventions, and media clear?
 There is no meaning
but the one created by the reader.
> TC: Sometimes “meaningless”
 Each individual situation is
a new beginning, another page one.
> TC: FAQs rarely work
 von Foerster (1949ff.) – radical constructivism

13. HOW WE CREATE MEANING
We combine our current situation…
… with past experience…
… by matching mental models.
 Semi-consciously selected, incomplete images
 What (we think) we understand of the world
 Shape how we face the world
 What (we think) our options are
 How we try to solve problems
 How confident we are in what we do

14. HOW WE CREATE MEANING

15. HOW WE CREATE MEANING

16. HOW WE CREATE MEANING
Image credit: jwarletta

17. HOW WE CREATE MEANING

18. HOW WE CREATE MEANING
Mental models
 Flexible and adaptable, within limits
 Support meaningful knowledge
 How we approach a task
 How we react to a problem
 How we look for help
 Inert, uncontrollable

19. HOW WE CREATE MEANING
Mental models
 Flexible and adaptable, within limits
 Support meaningful knowledge
 How we approach a task
 How we react to a problem
 How we look for help
 Inert, uncontrollable
 In tech comm:
Designer vs. user
 Norman (1988)

20. WHY WE CREATE MEANING
We are addicted to meaning!
 Conspiracy theories
 Pop lyrics, “mondegreens”
 Logos
 Janoff (1977)
Image credit: Marcin Wichary

21. WHY WE CREATE MEANING
We are addicted to meaning!
 Because we want to understand and do stuff:
What does this mean? How does this work?
 Because we seek order:
How does this hang together? How to connect the dots?

22. WHAT IS MEANINGFUL USER ASSISTANCE?
1. Relevant to user, applicable to stituation
2. Or a way ahead, a workaround
3. Or an explanation
4. Or understanding and sympathy

23. HOW TO CREATE MEANINGFUL USER ASSISTANCE
1. Understand how we create meaning
2. Adjust to mental models of users
 Observe user behaviour
 Offer several paths: Tasks and roles/personas
 Serve inertia
3. Apply minimalism
 Assist users in connecting the dots
 Focus on process and outcome, not product
 Encourage skills and experimentation

24. FURTHER READING AND SOURCES
1. DIKW Pyramid
2. Shannon & Weaver’s process theory (1949)
3. Fiske on semiotics (1990) (chapters 3 & 4)
4. von Foerster on radical constructivism (interviews in German)
5. Mental models
 in user interfaces
 Norman: The Design of Everyday Things (1988)
6. Mondegreens in pop lyrics
7. Creating meaning in Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight”
8. Janoff, designing the Apple logo (1977)
9. Carroll on minimalism (1998), (esp. chapter 2)

25. THANK YOU! KEEP IN TOUCH!
@techwriterkai
kaiweber.wordpress.com