How to help our audience find what they need

Ensuring that our audience can find and access the information they need when they need it has become just as essential as the information itself. Documentation architecture helps us to structure information and limit the amount of content we expose our users to.

Text by Sara Stein

Inhaltsübersicht

Image: © picsfive/123rf.com

The volume of digital information we produce continues to grow exponentially. For customers consuming technical documentation, this information explosion poses a potential hazard: Can they find and access the information they need?

As a technical writer producing documentation for a company with many products, I also have to wear the hat of information architect. The question of “Where is the information?” has become more important than the content itself. With so much documentation available online, we risk the customer experience becoming like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

In an ideal world, we want our customers to find the information they need quickly and easily. But how do we accomplish that when faced with so much information spanning years of development across different products and versions?

To get information to customers, a documentation site needs to ...