In the class Software Documentation, I learned principles of technical writing such as progressive disclosure, task-based authoring, and writing with the user in mind. Using those and other principles, I worked on a team of 5 to create comprehensive user assistance for XMind, a mind-mapping software. First, I helped create a competitive analysis of the user documentation for other mind-mapping software. Then, I helped identify our users and what they would want to do with XMind. Finally, using what we learned, I helped create the task-oriented user assistance.
In the interest of space and memory, I have only included topics I authored and some topics authored by my team that contextualize my content. I have marked as “[Context]” the topics that I did not author.
Date Written
April & May 2015
Target Audience
XMind end users: computer-savvy, visually-oriented people
Skills Developed
- Writing task-based user assistance
- Using Oxygen to author in DITA