Knowing your audience

People don't read technical documentation and instruction manuals for fun. They read them when they're stuck or need information. Our job as technical writers is to make sure our documentation is relevant and provides the reader with the information they need. To do this, we need to know who our target audience is.

First, learn about who uses the product or solution:

• What kind of work do they do and what kind of industries do they work in? A product for hospital patients versus a product for the IT department of a large company are obviously very different. These groups will have different needs, so learn as much about the customer base as possible.

• What kinds of tasks will customers perform? Analyze the tasks for each user persona. For example, the product's customer base might include end users, implementation engineers, and system administrators, and all of these groups will be doing different things with the product.

• What is each group's technical expertise? Part of being a technical writer involves simplifying technical concepts, but we need to do that in a way that is appropriate for the target audience. The goal is to give people the information they need - not to overwhelm them with too much information. This might be a bit of an extreme example, but I think it gets my point across: You don't need to tell a system administrator how to open a browser window, but your great-grandparents will probably need a lot more information about how the internet works.

Breaking things down

The product will probably need an overview document or a description of key features. This is general content that is useful for anyone who wants to learn about the product or solution. However, you will also need separate documents or pieces of content for individual user groups. For example, an end user and a system administrator will perform very different tasks, so you will need a separate user guide and administration guide.

Include the information that is relevant to the target audience. To make the content more personalized and engaging, use the second person ("you") to address your audience directly. At the beginning of the document, state up-front who it is intended for.

From time to time, you might need to mention another user type, but keep that information brief. For example, a procedure for end users might require a prerequisite informing the users that their administrator needs to set something up before they can perform the task. Don't go into the details of what the administrator needs to do - that's for the administration guide! In the user guide, only use third person to mention another user type (such as the administrator). Otherwise, use the second person to address the end user directly.