Technical Writing for Non Technical Writers
- Trainer
- Dimiter Simov, Irina Gerdjikova
- Objective
-
Provide non technical writing professionals with basic knowledge and skills in the field of technical writing.
Attendees learn to:
- Perform reviews.
- Prepare memos and presentations.
- Lead effective email correspondence.
- Write specifications and messages.
- Apply appropriate formatting to texts.
- Target Audience
- Developers, System Integration Professionals, Technical Support Representatives, Quality Assurance Professionals.
- Certificate
- Participants receive certificates for attendance.
- Format
-
Interactive Workshop: includes theory and practice. Sessions include individual and group exercises.
The emphasis of the course is on teaching practical skills.
- The theoretical part covers the basic concepts in the field, provides guidelines, and points to more resources and materials.
- The exercises give participants a chance to practice what they learned and receive personal feedback.
- Duration
- 2 days.
- Delivery
- In-house at your premises, at Lucrat's office, or another appropriate location.
- Price
-
Based on the number of participants
Participants Price (BGN, without VAT) Up to 6 4200 7 - 12 4800 + 600 for every participant after the 7th
- Options
-
For in-house delivery
- The format, duration, content, and respectively price of the course are negotiable.
- Topics can be included or excluded from the syllabus.
Syllabus
- Introduction
- Presentation of the course lead and attendees, syllabus, supporting materials and tools;
- About Technical Writing. Brief discussion of the profession of the technical writer, history and perspectives.
- Technical documentation. Definition and types – offline and online (accessed over the Internet) help, tutorials, inline instructions, messages, memos, reports, manuals, training materials, marketing texts, wikis, blogs, and so on.
- About Usability. Brief discussion of usability and human-centered design.
- Psychological aspects. Paradox of the active user; communicating within the team; working with other developers, designers, writers, testers, and PM's.
Exercises
- Define usability and technical writing. Discuss their similarities. Discuss how they fit into the work of a developer
- Correspondence, Memos, Reports
- Correspondence. Using email, replying, out-of-office messages.
- Memos. Types, structure, samples.
- Reviews. Types, participants, procedure, outcome.
Exercises
- Reply to email
- Prepare a memo
- Perform a review
- Specs
- Requirements and specs. Types of spec: functional, technical, interaction, graphical design, business. Samples.
- Why is a spec needed? Oracles – sources of information of whether the program is performing the way it should be performing; approaches for using them;
- Personas. Essence, goals, scenarios.
Exercises
- List and discuss oracles
- Prepare personas and scenarios
- Perform a specification review
- Messages
- Types of messages, examples, structure.
Exercises
- Write messages
- Formatting and Layout
- Presenting data on screen and on paper.
- Style – style guides and styles (including cascading style sheets).
- Microcontent – presenting primary ideas and concept in clear and parsimonious ways.
Exercises
- Edit texts to improve formatting
