Adobe Key Trends in Technical Communication at MEGAComm
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Part of our panel on Future Trends in Technical Communication, this presentation was given by Saibal Bhattacharjee (Product Marketing Manager, Adobe Systems Inc. for the Technical Communication Suite). MEGAComm was honored to have Adobe Systems Inc. as our Keynote Sponsor.
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Adobe Key Trends in Technical Communication at MEGAComm
- 1. Key Trends in Technical Communication Saibal Bhattacharjee | Product Marketing Manager, Adobe Systems Inc. saibal@adobe.com © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
- 2. There are no unreachable goals. Only underpowered tools! Are you using the right tool for technical writing? www.douwriteright.com © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
- 3. Six Key Trends In Technical Communication - 2013 © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 3
- 4. Trend 1: Movement From Unstructured To Structured Authoring FROM LONG DOCUMENTS TO TOPICS AND STRUCTURE/DITA © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 4
- 5. Trend 2: Device Explosion Necessitating Multi-Screen, Multi- Channel Publishing © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 5
- 6. Trend 3: Easily Searchable, Highly Personalized Content Yesterday Today © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 6
- 7. Trend 4: Increasing Demand For Rich Media In Technical Communication © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 7
- 8. Trend 5: Collaborative Content Creation, “Content Curation” © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 8
- 9. Trend 6: Single Sourcing Of Technical Documentation And Training Content © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 9
- 10. Key Considerations For The Future © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 10
- 11. User-generated Content Revolution: Everyone is a Publisher! © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 11
- 12. Key Elements of Tomorrow‟s “Content Strategy” © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 12
- 13. “Content Strategy” is about getting content… © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 13
- 14. What Does This Mean For Us Technical Writers? © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 14
- 15. Implication 1: “Connect” With Your Users Consumers want technical content to be… What this means for Technical Communicators… Easily accessible, available anytime Multichannel, multi-screen publishing anywhere Quickly searchable SEO, metadata tagging Dynamic and interactive in nature Rich media (graphics, demos, videos) Highly personalized Usage pattern analysis, content optimization Easily consumable Effective minimum dosage Immediately actionable Clear, concise guidance for desired results Open to end-user User-generated content feedback/comment/rating/input 15 © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 15
- 16. Implication 2: Wear Many “Hats” Today, technical writers need to keep several „hats‟ handy: Technical writer Technical trainer Information architect User experience designer Usability expert User interface designer Technical translator Technical illustrator © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 16
- 17. Implication 3: Think in terms of “ROI” Today, technical writers need to think in terms of delivering „concrete‟ business value: Measure performance by tracking defined metrics Track and analyze content usage and consumption patterns for optimization (Pareto Principle, the 80 – 20 Rule) %age increase in customer satisfaction score %age increase in product/service revenue %age decrease in volume of inbound calls to customer support %age decrease in time taken to resolve customer issues by support © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 17
- 18. Key Take-Away © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 18
- 19. Questions © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 19
- 20. There are no unreachable goals. Only underpowered tools! Are you using the right tool for technical writing? www.douwriteright.com © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
- 21. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Notas del editor
- The technical communication industry is witnessing a few major trends today…which are changing the way content is both created and consumed universally.There are 6 KEY TRENDS driving today’s technical communication world.The first and foremost industry trend is the conspicuous “Movement from Unstructured to Structured Authoring: DITA and Topic Based Authoring”.This is primarily driven by the cost pressures faced by organizations in translating the technical content in to multiple languages. As globalization of the world economy continues to open up new markets in emerging countries, the technical documentation also needs to be localized in as many new languages. This puts huge stress on a firm’s localization budget, if the firm is not following TOPIC-BASED STRUCTURED AUTHORING.Today, innumerable companies are moving from unstructured to structured authoring chiefly for cost-effective efficiency. With DITA and topic based authoring, appropriate metadata and tags are used, allowing several benefits: content is easier to reuse and manage later and repetitive tasks can be automated. This means that today’s technical communication tools need to allow users the flexibility to author standards-compliant content, as is the case with Adobe FrameMaker which has full support for DITA and other XML standards.
- The 2nd key industry trend is the unequivocal need for tools with “Multi-Screen, Multi-Channel Publishing” capabilities.917 million smartphones will be sold globally in 2014, according to IDC: http://www.statista.com/statistics/12865/forecast-for-sales-of-smartphones-worldwide/ Apple forecast to sell 102M iPads, 194M iPhones in 2013: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/29/apple-forecast-to-sell-102m-ipads-194m-iphones-in-2013 Estimated 29 billion people will be using the internet by end of 2015…a growth of 672% from 2000 numbers: http://www.c-i-a.com/internetusersexec.htmToday, people want content to be available to them on their multimedia handheld devices, so that they can consume content ANYWHERE ANYTIME.With the infiltration of multimedia devices and digital gadgets in our modern lives, publishers are always looking for means to take their content to the ubiquitous mobiles, eBook readers, tablet PCs, etc. Hence, today’s technical communication toolkits need to have the flexibility to push technical content out to the plethora of advanced hand-held devices for “true’ ANYTIME ANYWHERE consumption.
- The 3rd key industry trend is the pressing need to make today’s technical content “Easily Searchable and Personalized.”Today’s users are specialists in the kind of content they need to consume. No one wants to be presented with the whole universe of technical content, every time he or she needs to refer to a particular area/topic of interest. Hence, the need of the hour is to “personalize” content based on user roles/functional needs, and continually optimize the content based on usage pattern analytics.Also, today’s users don’t have time to look for the specific piece of information that they need in a hurry. Hence, the content needs to be made easily and quickly searchable by the end user. The authoring tools need to offer the right capabilities to create such highly responsive Help systems and Knowledgebases.
- The 4th trend is the increasing demand for “Rich Media” in today’s technical communication.As the attention span of today’s consumers decreases rapidly, they no longer want to sheaf through pages of TEXTUAL content to uncover the exact piece of information they need. Hence, they demand higher interactivity and dynamism in the technical content they are consuming. Content that is visually appealing and easily consumable is what they are looking for.In earlier days, it used to be that only the training deliverables would include video, animation or simulations.But now these types of asset are appearing directly in Help and support knowledgebases, especially when it is easier to watch a procedure than to read about it. This is even more important when you are communicating to a world wide audience.Since there is a trend to single source Help and user documentation, incorporating rich interactive media is making its way into traditional documentation content.3D is an asset type which has always required special viewers, separate from the mainstream tools and players. But with Acrobat 3D and Adobe PDF, live 3D models can now be delivered in PDF, which still happens to be the most popular format for technical documentation.This is also driven by the fact that today’s users have a plethora of multi-media hand-held devices in which they can readily consume interactive content.
- The 5th key industry trend is the “Democratization of Content Creation”.With radical developments in the electronic field, and with Web 2.0, the world of today’s users has grown exponentially more interactive, and technical communication has to match this to keep up.In today’s world, content is not created by a stand-alone author. Rather, a team of authors, SMEs, engineers, service specialists, even end-users all come together to contribute content meaningfully.The need of the hour is to offer solutions that facilitate seamless author-to-author, author-to-SME, author-to-user and user-to-user collaboration.Also, the role of today’s technical writer has changed from being a “CONTENT CREATOR” to becoming a “KNOWLEDGE CURATOR”. Today, the traditional “technical writer” has to wear many hats.Technical writerTechnical trainerInformation architectUser experience designerUsability expertUser interface designerTechnical translatorTechnical illustratorNew technologies and new business requirements are driving changes in the content that is authored and delivered.Traditionally, roles in the technical communication process were separate.Subject matter experts (typically engineers) would draft content and provide edits using their preferred tools like –email and word processors.Technical writers producing user manuals, policies and procedure etc., would work with the subject matter experts, and import content from the experts or create it from scratch. Their tools would normally be dedicated to their workflow – tools like Adobe FrameMaker.A separate set of technical writers would work on the embedded Help content, using tools designed for their purposes, such as RoboHelp. Even if those writers were the same as those producing the other technical documents, they would often be using different tools and they would not be sharing much content between their various authoring environments.And finally the training or eLearning department would take input from both the subject matter experts and the tech writers, and they would use tools designed for their purposes, such as PowerPoint or Adobe Captivate.But these boundaries and work processes are breaking down.With tools like Adobe FrameMaker, it becomes more efficient for subject matter experts to use the same tools as the technical writers. This is especially the case if XML is being introduced.Also PDF-based review and markup is a lot more efficient than the paper-based review. The bottom line is that the tools and types of output produced by the subject matter experts and the technical writers are become more and more alike.You can reduce the cost of producing Help and training content if they are both created from a single source. Especially if the content can be carefully structured using XML to enable variations in Help and documentation to be handled automatically. In cases where software development is moving from desktop to the web (and where the “application” is as much about the content as the features), it makes sense for subject matter experts to be using Adobe RoboHelp to directly create content. So what we are seeing are both the user communities and the tools sets used beginning to converge between the Help producers and the document producers.To produce engaging, interactive and dynamic content, the training team (often referred to as “eLearning”) started off using specialized tools that were not used outside of their department. But as content from the other user groups were delivered electronically and as a ubiquitous platforms for delivering that content are now established (i.e. PDF and Flash), we’ve seen these specialized tools being adopted by the other technical communicators. For example, “how to” demonstrations developed with Adobe Captivate are being added to Help content. Meanwhile you have this drive to reduce costs forcing the eLearning department to look hard at reusing content, rather than rewriting it for their own presentation.The takeaway is that the tools used by distinct users and department are becoming more and more alike.