May General Meeting Recap
Cooking the Books: A Practical Guide to Documentation Design

by Marisa Latin, Hospitality Manager

May's general meeting was about using product classes to help determine what type of information is needed for almost any product.

After 20 years of designing, writing, editing, and publishing just about every kind of technical document there is, Tim Grantham has learned that products can be classified into six basic groups, and each class of product requires certain types of documentation. Tim also shared with us what kind of information these documents should include. Thank you, Tim! So here's what is in Tim's McHappy Meal of Documentation Sets (and I call it that because he was really cooking, and it was really good, and we got to bring home a copy of the presentation).

Six Product Classes

Here's Tim's classification of products:

Type

Size

User Interface

Hardware:
any physical product, not just equipment, including embedded software

Small

Simple:
any interface that a novice can learn to use in one hour; for example, a debit card terminal or consumer digital camera

Rich:
any interface that a novice can learn to use in one hour; for example, a debit card terminal or consumer digital camera

Large:
any hardware product requiring special site preparation

Simple:
any interface that a novice can learn to use in one hour; for example, airport kiosks

Rich:
includes programming interfaces; for example, commercial aircrafts

Software:
a non-physical product, one that does not require any user documentation of hardware

Simple:
any interface that a novice can learn to use in one hour; for example Wizards or browsers

Rich:
includes programming interfaces; for example, database application or desktop publishing.

Six Types of Documentation

The following table specifies the type of document that is required for each product class. The method of distribution depends on the type of audience, type of customer relationship, and costs (printing, distribution, and maintenance). Note that a product with different types of users may belong to more than one product class.

	Unpacking Guide	Site Prep. Guide	Install. Planning Guide	Install. Guide	User Guide	Service Guide
Small Hardware, simple UI	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Maybe
Large Hardware, simple UI	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Maybe
Small Hardware, rich UI	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Maybe
Large Hardware, rich UI	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Maybe
Software only, simple UI	No	No	No	Yes	Maybe	No
Software only, rich UI	No	No	Maybe	Yes	Yes	No

About the Speaker

Tim Grantham is the user documentation standards team leader for Thermo Electron Corporation, a global manufacturer of instrumentation products with US $2.2 billion in annual revenues. He also supervises a small documentation team at the company's Laboratory Automation and Integration business unit in Burlington, Ontario. Tim's documents have won several awards in the annual STC chapter-level competitions, including Excellence and Distinguished.

About Marisa Latin

Marisa has been a technical writer for over ten years and is currently at Inscriber. She lives with her lively family and long list of pets. In her spare time, you can find her seeking nature's wonders and capturing 'life' on camera.

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