Write The Docs EU — Christine Burwinkle — Pairing with designers to create a seamless user experience

I’m at Write The Docs EU today in Budapest and will post semi–unpolished notes from sessions throughout the day after each talk finishes.

Christine is a tech writer from Atlassian, who is best known for Jira and Confluence.

• Went from five to thirty designers in the last two years.
• Goal: Help casual users, too!
• Ten tech writers, 400 developers.

Techniques borrowed from designers are used for their writing.

Three main design principles (printed and framed, hanging on their office wall):

1. Be familiar
2. Grow with me (help users become power users)
3. Give me clarity

Aside: Android UX principle is her personal favorite.

Audience/Personas — they printed them everywhere.

Designers took a year–long project:

1. What role is a feature targeting.
2. What is assumed skills/background
3. How do

Leverage data from designers to help them craft better documentation.

Measure success by piggybacking:

• Usability testing to determine if they need documentation, and publishing FAQs (if necessary).
• Analytics results.

Diving into borrowing design techniques

Workshopping example: Empathy maps (to bring focus to the user)

• Better understand their feelings “before and after” a situation
• Work backwards from the “after” situation to create an ideal state, and empower users.

They’re huge fans of Post–Its:

• Easy to move ideas around.
• Excellent for separate collaboration and brainstorming.
• Inexpensive, mobile, and fun!

Workshopping example: Sparring sessions

• Critique session to bring group thinking into design and planning.
• Confirms if goals are met with the prototype.

Sparring with TWs (technical writers)

Before the session, TW sends:

• Draft to discuss
• List of goals in the document

Superb sparring session tips

• Timebox!
• If your team is given to negativity, try positives–only for five minutes. Fantastic idea!
• Make sure everyone is heard. Use a checklist, or give everyone one minute to list feedback.
• Leave with at least three action items.

Workshopping example: 6–ups

• Divide a sheet into six parts.
• Focuses on ideal solutions.
• Gets out of thinking in words. (Draw!)
• Great method to build on ideas from colleagues.

Workshopping example: User stories

• How does a user get to a feature? Is it controlled? From many different areas with different goals?
• What does a user do before? What do they (usually) do next?
• If they fall out of line in the process, documentation is needed for additional context.
• Lo–Fi: Use colored stickers to “vote”, then build the document plan based on problem areas.
• Australian slang: “Doco” is short for documentation. 🙂

Finding the right projects — look for:

• A team that finds value in design and tech writing.
• A designer who sees value in the docs
• A new project that’s running lean and has some momentum.
• Look for projects that are data–driven.

Explore and expand

• Read design principles and techniques.
• Follow UX blogs.
• Write a documentation experience plan.