April/May 2007

Volume 47, Number 5

Three Alternate Careers for Technical Communicators

by Martha Sippel

I’ve been fortunate to experience a few different careers and many job positions. I think I’ve finally found my technical calling, but am not sure that I’ve found my true purpose in life because I still long to be outside instead of sitting at a computer. But that’s another story.

Alternate careers are plentiful for technical communicators. If you are a successful technical communicator, you may find that you can transfer your skills to several different careers. As technical communicators, here are three of the skills we use often:

1. We take disorganized information and tighten it into a neat order that makes sense to most people.
2. We talk to many different experts about complicated topics, ask questions, digest the information, and rewrite it so it makes sense to both professionals and laypeople.
3. We interview and observe users to help developers and managers understand what it is that users truly want out of our software, hardware, website, or web application.

How can you apply these skills to different careers? There are several options. As a technical communicator, hopefully you’ve learned to think outside the box and employ the ingenuity that you’ve developed over the years. However, we technical communicators often sell ourselves short. You may ask, “How can I translate my expertise into another career?” or “How can I market myself differently?” Or maybe you wonder how you can stay employed full time, yet parlay your full-time employment into another career within your company? Here are three potential alternate careers that relate to the three skills described above.

Information Architecture

There are many paths to becoming an information architect. Let’s review the first example above. As technical communicators, we often find ourselves taking disorganized information from multiple sources and organizing it into a logical order. We also can rewrite the information so it sounds like it came from the same source. We might talk to people while we are performing this task, but we may not have the time to do this so often we complete this task on our own. How does this translate into another career?

This task is performed frequently by information architects (IAs) who are organizing and synthesizing large amounts of information to make it more easily understood. Information architects perform many different tasks to develop logical results. As Wikipedia says, “Information architecture is the practice of structuring information (knowledge or data) for specific purposes in a specific context. The context might be web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, or enterprise architecture. Information architecture has somewhat different meanings in these different branches of what might be called IS and/or IT architecture.” If IA interests you, look up information architect in Wikipedia and check out the resources. I’ll list a few usability and IA websites at the end of this article.

How can you gain the experience you need to perform information architecture tasks as a professional? It doesn’t happen overnight. Take a college course on the topic, or attend a training session or appropriate conference. If money is a concern, volunteering to help someone who works in the business will allow you to learn new skills. Volunteer to help organize something that sorely needs it, like a site on your company intranet, a nonprofit website, a charity auction document, or a neighborhood newsletter. Investigate the information architects in your professional organization(s) and ask if you can talk to them (a few STC RMC members are IAs or interaction designers).

Training

How about the second skill? As technical communicators, we interview experts about complicated topics, digest the information they provide, ask questions to understand it thoroughly enough to write about it, and rewrite it so it makes sense to both professionals and laypeople alike. These skills transfer to about any industry you can think of, including training. Successful trainers listen to what their students want and provide the information they need. These trainers not only listen, but they condense information, find solutions that make sense to their students, and teach in different ways so most of their students can apply their education in a professional career.

Training requires understanding the information, employing listening skills, and being able to synthesize the information into something that makes sense to most people. Yes, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a start. I’m not implying that you can simply call yourself a trainer, but if training people interests you, there are resources available. Wikipedia defines training as, “Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at technical colleges and polytechnics. Today it is often referred to as professional development.” This sounds a lot like some of the tasks that many technical communicators perform daily.

Many trainers I know did not get a formal education in instructional design, education, or information design. They moved into the positions by taking on more training-related tasks and then parlayed that information and education into a new career. Start by researching options that interest you and talking to people who are professional trainers. If it sounds like something you would like to do, investigate your options to move in this direction.

Usability

The third example is interviewing and observing users to help the developers and managers understand what it is that they truly want out of our software, hardware, website, or web application. Usability testing provides information that potentially improves the design and makes products more user friendly. Maybe you haven’t been fortunate enough to do even rudimentary usability testing, but it is something that I find very interesting. Many of us think that our models are user friendly, but put a simple paper prototype in front of someone who is unfamiliar with it and observe the results. It’s humbling.

I first performed a simple usability test to illustrate that a design was unintuitive. Our team was developing an employee timesheet web application and nobody could figure out what was wrong. In this case, everyone needed to fill out their own timesheet. However, managers needed to approve timesheets and the accounting department needed to perform tasks related to managing timesheets, so the application needed to provide different methods for specific employees. In other words, we had to think about all of the users and which tasks they needed to perform. I got management approval to perform some rudimentary usability tests (as long as it didn’t take too much time). I invited the lead developer into a conference room and asked him to keep quiet or I would tie his hands down (not really, but you get the idea). I then brought in user after user who demonstrated again and again that they did not understand that they should click on the clock icon to display the timesheet. I got the point across and our graphic designer worked to make the design more intuitive so employees knew where to click to get what they needed.

Usability links directly to technical communication in many ways. The first is that both require an understanding of your audience, your audience’s goals, and how to best meet those goals. Wikipedia defines it as, “Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object's perceived efficiency or elegance. In human-computer interaction and computer science, usability usually refers to the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site is designed. The term is also used often in the context of products like consumer electronics, or in the areas of communication, and knowledge transfer objects (such as a cookbook, a document or online help). It can also refer to the efficient design of mechanical objects such as a door handle or a hammer.” I imagine that most of these terms are familiar to you, so you can see how usability relates directly to technical communication and provides another related alternate career for technical communicators.

Summary

Information architecture, training, and usability are three alternative careers into which technical communicators can transition. Again, I am not implying you can simply change your title and move into one of these fields because each profession requires specific education, knowledge, and experience. But if you are dedicated, you can do it. As technical communicators, we must always adapt to changing times and technologies to gain more respect as professionals. Here is how I adapted and moved into alternate careers.

My previous career in the petroleum industry taught me to be versatile and flexible while I discovered that I enjoyed writing about technical topics. After obtaining another bachelor’s degree in technical communication (with an emphasis in technical writing and editing), I not only found another job; I discovered new careers in technical communications, usability, and information architecture. I love interaction design and determining what works best for the largest number of people.

After leaving corporate America to pursue my independence, I find that my future is limited only by my thoughts and actions. With continued learning, patience, and a positive attitude, you can change your career. Listen to what people who love what they do have to say. It might help you find your path to alternate careers that are more interesting, or that pay you more than your current position. The freedom I have found as an independent consultant working from home allows me to pursue passions and hobbies unrelated to my professional career. Go forth and prosper!

Additional Resources

American Society for Training and Development: http://www.astd.org/astd

Boxes and Arrows website http://www.boxesandarrows.com/

Information Architecture Institute: http://iainstitute.org/library/subjectPage.php?id=47&filterLanguage=

Jakob Nielsen’s website: http://www.useit.com/

Jesse James Garrett’s IA resources: http://jjg.net/ia/

Lou Rosenfeld’s website: http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/

Nielsen Norman Group: http://www.nngroup.com/ (also links to Jakob Nielsen, Don

Norman, and Bruce Tognazzini – Ask Tog)

The Usability Professionals’ Association: http://www.upassoc.org/ (see Usability Resources)

University of Minnesota at Duluth webpage with numerous links to a wide variety of information architecture resources: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/architecture.html

User Experience Network (UXNet): http://uxnet.org/