Technical Communication morphs and changes into Information Design
25 June 2008 Our colleague Alison Reynolds from the GDID programme has just published an article in the Southern Communicator (the journal of TCANZ) proposing the profession redefine itself as 'information design'. It's about time the industry faced this rather difficult decision. We suspect the debate won't be popular in some parts of the world, nor some parts of the industry, because it's about re-defining what the industry is and does.Alison has given her permission for us to reproduce some key comments here. (The full article is only available to members on the TCANZ web site.) She starts by tracing the development of technical communication.
It is clear from the feedback given by GDID students that there is a strong demand for people with these skills. There is almost a hundred percent employment rate of GDID graduates, although to be fair, many are already in employment while they are doing the course. Students report that the information design skills they gain from the course are valuable to them and their employers, and helped them do things at work they couldn't do before.As new technology became more accessible to the public, the demand by consumers for products with supporting documentation grew rapidly. Technical writers became technical communicators as they found themselves responsible for more than effective writing. They needed to ensure that documentation was aimed at the users’ needs rather than just a ‘tack-on’ at the end of product development. Therefore, their roles changed to include competencies, such as audience analysis, document design and computing tools to produce a variety of information ‘packages’ to meet the users’ needs.
Practitioners now need a broad range of skills that are more focused on problem-solving approaches to communication needs that occur in commerce, health, education, as well as in the traditional areas of science, computing and electronics. I believe that it is these changes in the core competencies of technical communication that drive a need to redefine the profession as ‘information design’.So what are these competencies? Our industry and academic advisors carefully monitor the competencies taught in our programme that includes the following courses:
- writing and editing (still a ‘must have’)
- current research and practice (international information trends, localization, interviewing skills, ethics, group dynamics, personal skills)
- information management (content management, single sourcing, task analysis, project management)
- information design (design strategies for online and paper information products)
- usability testing.
No doubt these competencies will continue to change as the profession meets more information challenges. The only way to keep up is to take up the challenge of learning new skills through further education."
This tells us that re-defining technical communication in the broader terms of information design is more than likely going to make people more employable, and considering the economic times we live in, this has to be a good thing.
Greg and Bruce
Labels: information design
posted by Greg on Wednesday, June 25, 2008,
