UWP 104T: Technical Writing — Final Reflection

Why I signed up for this course.

I'm a Design major, specialising in UI/UX design. In this field, there's three types of communication:

• Self-presentations — portfolios, case studies, the stuff we publish about our work,
• Process artefacts — ideation, usability testing, the stuff we make to inform our work, and
• Within-product communication — content, microcopy, the stuff that is part of our work.

Many UI/UX designers do technical writing or work on a team with a dedicated technical writer, so I signed up for UWP 104T because of its relevance to my career goals. After reading the course description, I thought we would be practising within-product communication like descriptions, tutorials, and instructions.

What I've learned about technical communication.

I feel that I've learned a great deal through this course, not only about technical communication, but also about communication more broadly.

It's (not just) logical.

At the beginning of this course, we considered the rhetorical triangle of audience, purpose, and context, and how these apply to technical communication. We discussed how audiences are made of people, purposes are the result of people's motivations, and contexts are constructed by the past actions of people.

People are often illogical, so it follows that in order to appropriately address audiences, purposes, and contexts, we must be willing to communicate both logically and illogically. This is seen in the classic rhetorical appeals: pathos, ethos, and logos. Only one of them addresses central, logical thinking, while the other two both appeal to peripheral, affective thinking.

This theory helps us understand how technical communication is connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion. By keeping in mind both the central and peripheral, logical and illogical aspects of documents while reviewing and creating technical communication, we can be more critical of the arbitrary appearance of logic, and how this arbitrary appearance of logic can conceal biases, inequity, and exclusion. It is sometimes the communication that (either unintentionally or intentionally) makes a product or process inaccessible, and not the product or process itself. One solution to this issue that we discussed in class is evaluating technical communication using the 7Cs of communication:

• Clear — making each idea discoverable for the audience,
• Coherent — making the relationship between ideas accessible to the audience,
• Concise — making sure the audience doesn't get overwhelmed or tired,
• Concrete — matching the document's reality to the audience's reality,
• Correct — presenting information the way the audience expects and needs,
• Complete — addressing special situations that the audience may find themselves in, and
• Courteous — diffusing the audience's negative emotions.

These Cs address not only the linguistic aspects of communication, but also multimodal possibilities. Using an unordered list instead of a large paragraph can make a set of information both clearer and more concise. Including images in a set of instructions can make them more concrete. Communication is an inherently sensory experience, and the affective parts of information can have a significant impact on its effectiveness.

A lot goes into it.

Throughout this class I've received a brief introduction to the iterative and collaborative processes of researching, writing, and revising technical communication documents, and the texts that aid in this collaboration (writer's memos, peer feedback, etc.). I've gained a greater appreciation for the amount of time and work that goes into audience-oriented texts, and I'm looking forward to applying what I've learned in this class to future technical writing, non-technical writing, UI/UX, and creative projects.