Sources

When I first entered the world of online content development in 1999, I was initially guided by my background in literary theory and analysis. My principles derived from Reader-Response theory, in which the meaning of the work is determined by the experience of the reader, as well as the work of Jakob Nielsen at Sun Microsystems, which was the basis for his book Designing Web Usability. As I began working in the industry, I was also introduced to the work of Edward Tufte and John M. Carroll. From all of these influences, I formulated an approach to online content that was reader-centric and focused on meaningful impact - my content is meant to educate, persuade, and move the reader to action.

My approach to information architecture, informed by Carroll as well as Ted Nelson and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), is similarly reader-centric. This means putting the needs of the reader first, thinking of what it is they want to accomplish, and making it easy to find the information they need.

Ward Cunningham and Bo Lebouf’s The Wiki Way introduced me to a medium well-suited to the practical implementation of my theoretical principles, and for much of my career I have focused on developing enterprise-scale product information wikis on platforms like Confluence, TWiki, and XWiki, with topic and content structures based on DITA.

With a reader-centric approach to content comes a responsibility to the reader.

• Does the content help them complete a task or achieve a goal?

• Does it persuade them to connect or take action on their own?

• Does it bring them to a greater understanding of a concept or situation?

Defining the desired impact for the reader should always be the first objective of any technical communications project.

From these sources and experiences, I have arrived at the three aspects of quality technical information, which inform all my projects:

1. It should be discoverable.

2. It should be readable.

3. It should be useful.