I Feel Your Pain:
Some Good Questions to Ask

by Sherry McMenemy

As the role of technical communicators continues to evolve, a strong focus on needs assessment and process will make the difference between good communications and valuable communications.

At RIM, our team uses a wide range of surveys and questionnaires to try to really understand where our users are coming from—including their goals, challenges, processes and mental models. To our benefit, we are primarily focused on internal customers, so we can corner them in the kitchen if they aren’t forthcoming with the information that we need. But, even if your customers are not local to where you work, taking the time to ask them questions over the phone or via an online survey can be very worthwhile.

We gather information from our customers and then analyse it for a wide range of activities and deliverables, such as when we are:

• Organizing and indexing a standard guide
• Creating a team intranet site
• Setting project priorities against limited resources (e.g., Should we do online tutorials or a guide first? Would an FAQ do?)
• Establishing “best bet” requirements for new systems or new functions
• Designing an online interface, information architecture and so on
• Recommending business process changes/improvements.

While each set of questions is necessarily unique to a project or business objective, there are a few questions that always seem to be included. Perhaps they will be of use to you as well.

The Questions

At the end of the day, what are you really trying to do?

This question helps you to gain a better understanding of “Job One” (for all you John Bowie and UIE fans out there). Typically, interviewees will first give an answer that is NOT what you are looking for. They may focus on a process/task (“I’m trying to submit a form to this website” or “I need to create a new profile.”) or on a high-level goal that isn’t specific enough (“Make money.” or “Keep my boss off my back”).

To help them articulate as clearly as possible what Job One is for them, ask probing questions. You’ll know you have asked the right questions when you get some good answers like these:

• “My job is to ensure that customers get an answer to a troubleshooting question, and to help to prevent future problems.”
• “I try to process Account Payable entries without errors and with enough information to ensure that our vendors receive payment on time.”

Who are your customers/audiences/stakeholders? What are they trying to do?

Sometimes we forget that we are often working with customers who also have their own customers. The more we can target our communications to meet that additional requirement, the more we will increase the value of what we deliver.

And don’t be surprised if customers don’t know who their customers are and what those customers are trying to do! Time and again, one of the best contributions we’ve made to a project/team is to help them to identify their customers and the needs of those customers. Going through the process with teams has also led to some unexpected and positive side effects: informally, we hear back from them that they feel “renewed” in their work, or more “focused” on what they need to do. It’s a feeling we often experience when we are able to stay user-focused in what we do, so it’s great when we can share that with the teams that we work with.

What information/data do you need most to do your job well? How do you get it right now? Who owns it?

In addition to things such as inputs for a particular process, you might want to probe to get big-picture challenges here. For example, we often find that there is something we can do to help Team A get this information to Team B. If you work primarily with external customers, a similar idea might be to update your company’s website, knowledge base or FAQ document with this information (or at least provide information about where to find it).

Understanding ownership of information is always valuable. If “information is power”, then we are power brokers. Again, it’s not crucial that YOU are able to deliver the information. If you don’t own it, think about what you can do to help share it. If you work in a group where the work is divided up by module, is there anything that a co-worker can add to their documentation that will make it easier for your customers? If so, it’s a relatively easy way to positively impact Job One.

What is your favourite tool/site/resource to use? Why?

Don’t limit the answers to this question to the ones that your company creates, or even to ones that are business-related. Sometimes, the best insight into a good interface change will come from a mental model that is prevalent in the “user” community. This question can also help you to understand where to focus your resources.

If the responses you receive show an interest in spreadsheets, for example, you can deliver information in a spreadsheet or use more tables in your documentation. Or, if many of them mention “easy to use” as a primary factor, you might be able to use this data to convince a Product Manager to do more user testing earlier in the development cycle.

If I could wave a magic wand and change your process to be “exactly” what you want — what would it look like? What would you have to do? What would you NOT have to do?

As with the previous question, answers to this question should provide insight into good interfaces and delivery channels for you to consider as you work on technical communications, or even interface changes if you have input into how they are designed and developed. To get good feedback on this type of question, it’s important that you encourage people to “think outside the box”.

If I am reviewing a form with this type of information, I might use the responses to this question as a guideline to determine which fields to include in the form, and to perhaps increase what information gets processed in behind the form. This will then reduce how much “work” a user has to do to complete the form. Or, in more traditional technical communications, you might uncover an opportunity to provide “just in time” information via embedded help.

This is also a good question for uncovering opportunities where your company can provide better or more functionality against competitor offerings.

Final Thoughts

While some of my favourite questions don’t seem to be directly related to deliverables for technical communications, we do find that the information we get from customers, when we ask them, is very helpful for all of our services.

Whatever your core role, understanding your customer will always be a good idea. Try one or more of these questions when you get a chance—you might be very pleased with the results.

About Sherry McMenemy

Sherry McMenemy is a senior STC member and manages RIM's Knowledge Operations team. She spends much of her time on strategic knowledge management, application/web UI and communications. At home, she's all about renovations, reading, and watching anything by Joss Whedon.