Is technical communication a part of user experience?

Is tech­nical com­mu­nic­a­tion a part of user experience?

Abso­lutely. Without Doubt.

One major inter­ac­tion that a user has with a sys­tem is the doc­u­ment­a­tion accom­pa­ny­ing the product, either as prin­ted manu­als or their elec­tronic cous­ins. In fact, any text that a user sees on the screen in the form of labels and copy is a form of tech­nical com­mu­nic­a­tion – another source of inter­ac­tion with the user.

I’ve had many people ask me about trans­ition­ing from tech­nical com­mu­nic­a­tion to usability/user exper­i­ence. All I can say to them is that you might already be doing it; only that you aren’t aware of it yet.

Another ques­tion I get to field often is how to ‘get into’ it. The answer that I give mostly is Volun­teer. Volun­teer to check screens/copy text for clarity/disambiguity. Volun­teer to check every inter­ac­tion a user would have with the sys­tem. Provide clear and mean­ing­ful copy for error messages.

Tech­nical Com­mu­nic­at­ors often for­get a very import­ant fact – they are often the first users of a sys­tem. Most of the time, they are just con­cerned about just doc­u­ment­ing the sys­tem, rather than look­ing at it from a user per­spect­ive. I’ve seen this hap­pen a lot of times and have been guilty of the same on sev­eral occasions.

In a blog post at Adapt­ive Path, Peter Mer­holz writes, I believe that user exper­i­ence is not best thought of as an activ­ity or func­tion, but as a mind­set. To vary­ing degrees, every customer-facing per­son in an organ­iz­a­tion has an impact on, and, thus, respons­ib­il­ity for the user experience.

That’s some­thing every­one aspir­ing to be a usab­il­ity prac­ti­tioner ought to be tak­ing to heart.