Is your technical documentation an afterthought, or designed by a programmer? Do your users
complain that your documentation is hard to use, or hard to find things in?
Technical documentation includes both print and online documents, as well as quick start guides.
Cognitive Technologies has developed technical documentation for software products ranging from
educational software to complex expert systems, and we recognize the importance of good documentation.
Excellent user-centered documentation can make the operation of a system, software application, or
tool easier to understand and thus, will improve its acceptance.
Cognitive Technologies uses a process similar to instructional design to analyze, design, develop,
and test technical documentation. Our goal is to produce documentation that is user-centered and
intuitive. In order to create the documentation, we analyze the user's mental model and the context
of use. Activities we perform within this service area include:
- Conduct user needs analysis, including assessing relevant user characteristics
- Assess relevant work settings and perform analysis of the work the users will be doing with the system
- Document scenarios of system/tool use and the outcomes that the user must produce using the system and documentation
- Specify instructional and organizational strategies to be used in the documentation
- Specify materials, layout, and communication style of the documentation
- Design the documentation and develop the content
- Edit, evaluate and pilot the documentation with users
- Refine and produce the documentation.
Contact the design specialists at Cognitive Technologies to develop intuitive, easy-to use-technical
documentation for your critical software and systems.