atw: Re: University Research Project - How to avoid working in a void?

I'm with Craig Hadden on this one... There are always factors of documentation 
that you can attend to, pretty much prepping yourself for the smallish window 
of 
time you might have to use the product you are documenting.

there is also the factor that with time, a good tech writer will become 
familiar with 
generalised functionality of products and tools.  there are certain things that 
you 
can map out (like Creating an X, Changing an X, Deleting an X), which you can 
with some certainty assume (yeah we all know about "assume"!) that enables you 
to get certain amounts of grunt writing work done in a vacuum.

IMHO---Ultimately, anyone who asks you to document a product that is not yet in 
existence, or is unavailable to the writer might need a check up from the neck 
up if 
they think the doco is going to be worth more than window dressing.

Luck with your course

Joe Z



> Craig Hadden <CraigH@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Maray (Sherwood) wrote:
> > Sometimes ...you are not seeing or doing what you are writing
> about...
> > How do [you] overcome this ...?
> 
> Maray, my take on this would be that you can write some parts of the
> documentation (e.g. conceptual topics like "What is a widget?")
> without
> access to what you're writing about. But you might not be able to
> write
> procedures accurately, particularly if your audience has little
> knowledge
> (and therefore the steps need to be very detailed). 
> 
> So, you could structure your time to write and/or check the detailed
> procedures while you have access, and write other content when you
> don't. 
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Craig 
> 
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