Minimum Viable Documentation – Write the Docs NA 2014

My talk at Write the Docs North America, 2014, on the role of documentation in the product development process.

Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZcodengwk&feature=youtu.be

Typefaces used are Adria Slab and Courier Prime.

Transcript

1. Minimum Viable Documentation by Matthew Lyon @mattly Write the Docs 2014 Portland, Oregon
2. what is a 
 minimum viable product?
3. “building software is
 expensive & risky” – money sloth
4. test the feasibility
 of an idea
5. by building 
 as little 
 as possible
6. minimum viable
7. early
 adopters mainstream users
8. “No wireless. 
 Less space than a nomad
 Lame.” – slashdot, on the iPod
9. what is the 
 purpose
 of software?
10. “software helps 
 solve problems” – product sloth
11. it has to 
 work better than existing solutions
12. “printing a form, filling it out, and faxing it in is less hassle than the Adobe Plugin” – me, about coveroregon.com
13. how do we 
 help people
 solve problems?
14. “we’ll provide a good 
 user experience” – design sloth
15. As a _____________ I want to ____________ so I can ____________ do something user be awesome
16. getting their world 
 requires empathy
18. how are people 
 going to interpret 
 this interface?
19. how are people going to interpret these words?
20. how are developers 
 using empathy to 
 help themselves?
21. “I want to know when a change breaks something” – code sloth
24. “what was I thinking when I wrote this two months ago?” – code sloth
25. pair with new developers
 to document difficult things as they have questions
26. who are your users? what do they want 
 to do?
28. reference docs are an outboard memory
30. learn how to forget
32. how can you help them
 to do what they want?
33. how can you help them
 to do what they want?
37. HOWTOs work with
 user experience design
38. link to HOWTOs from your marketing site
39. link to HOWTOs from your new user experience
40. use your HOWTOs to regression test
 your user experience
41. use your HOWTOs 
 to keep a handle on UX debt
42. how can tech writers
 be proactive in lean development?
43. some developers started writing their tests first
 and then the code
44. what if you 
 thoroughly 
 prototyped 
 your user experience 
 in words?