Turning technical documentation into intelligent information

Developed by a group of highly experienced technical communicators, the Intelligent Information Request and Delivery Standard (iiRDS) is the new content delivery standard for technical documentation. It aims to provide machines and users with relevant, context-specific content. But how can your content become iiRDS content?

Text by Ulrike Parson

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Turning technical documentation into intelligent information

Image: Sitthinan Saengsanga/123rf.com

The Internet of Things and smart factories require us to rethink how we deliver user information. The classical document with hundreds of pages is no longer viable. Today, we must deliver small content modules that show only the content that users need at a particular moment in time in a particular context. 
Content needs to be enriched with metadata to create context between the content modules. Metadata makes it possible to select the right content from a large pool of content modules. Therefore, metadata needs to be part of the delivery, along with the content.

Metadata is structured data that contains information about the characteristics of other data. With metadata, you can categorize large amounts of data in a clear and automated manner, for example, when describing videos, documents, objects, sitemaps, or metatags. Content modules enriched with metadata turn technical ...