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.

“The number one success factor for user experience professionals is education… Coupled with education is experience… Building on the education and experience is exposure.”

As someone who is building a career path in User Experience and someone who has been asked this question a few times, this post is a good primer.

Personally, I think I need to build up on the Experience part a wee bit and Exposure part a lot. Building your exposure is something I’ve never focussed on, which I shall rectify.