A growing trend in the component content management systems (CCMS) market is increasing demand from small and medium enterprises, or SMEs. Historically, CCMS providers focused on delivering solutions to large-scale enterprises with complex content and publishing needs and often the SMEs were overlooked.

However, the days of creating a Frankenstein-like CCMS where SMEs use multiple platforms mashed together with often precarious one-way connections and complicated publishing processes might soon be a thing of the past, as a number of CCMS providers lean in to service this market.

Estimated to be worth US$5.5Bn by 2027, the industry is on a fast growth trajectory.  Underpinning this growth are the needs of SMEs, many of whom are looking for content management platforms that maximize efficiencies, reduce repetition, and produce on-brand responsive publications for their users. And with the continued globalization of businesses, communicating policies and procedures, SOPs and mission critical compliance to teams around the world in a multitude of languages has never been so pressing.

However, there are some drawbacks with component content management systems that should not be overlooked and could impede market growth. While a comprehensive CCMS that supports the full authoring journey is the end goal, its slow implementation into routine business practices due to the full suite of features may seem overly complicated and unnecessary.

To combat this, many CCMS providers work closely with organizations to understand their needs and simplify the features where possible before implementing the component content management system.

Rather than a one-size fits all solution developed with large enterprises in mind, SMEs demand flexibility and providers who support not only structured authoring, but can also offer a lightweight unstructured environment  allowing  increased collaboration between technical writers and subject matter experts to keep workflows moving forward efficiently.

If you are in the market for a CCMS, expect to see more providers looking at how to support SMEs with their content needs through innovative and intelligent solutions. But be sure to ask the right questions before you make a costly investment to ensure the solution is right for your needs, both now and in the future.

Presenting ideas visually is a great way to appeal to a wider audience and to make a lasting impression. As Content Rules’ graphic designer, get asked to do this with every project I work on. While some ideas are easy to visualize, complex or abstract concepts can be especially challenging to represent graphically. For example, if I’m asked to represent a computer, the hardest part is making sure the colors and style match the corporate brand guidelines. If a project requires visual representation of something a lot less easily recognizable–such as a specific type of content “component”– much more work needs to be done before I can even open Adobe Illustrator. After facing this conundrum fairly often, I have devised a method for streamlining my illustration workflow. Hopefully, this will help other visual artists in finding a workflow that works well for them.

Brainstorm & Research

The first step of this process begins with Brainstorm & Research. When I am asked to illustrate a more abstract concept, I usually begin by doing word associations that could help build a connection to something more visually recognizable. For example, “strength” is not necessarily something that can be illustrated literally. Instead, I might try to visualize a muscle or a dumbbell, which are related, and easily recognizable by a wide audience. If this doesn’t lead anywhere, or the concept is very abstract, the next step is to research. I start with a search engine image search, looking to see how other artists have illustrated the same or similar ideas. I usually browse a few different websites, and eventually, save the best three or four visual ideas for the next step. If I’m unable to find any good ideas, perhaps the concept itself is better left in words only, as not to confuse an audience with an irrelevant graphic.

Creation

This takes me to the second step in my illustration workflow–Creation. Once you have some idea(s) of how you will illustrate your concept, it’s important to sketch. This doesn’t have to be on paper–most of my sketching happens in Illustrator–but it does need to be quick and without total commitment. The key is to play with different shapes and lines to solidify the original idea(s) and fit them into the required style guidelines. At this point in my workflow, I review the style guidelines to set restrictions. This usually involves defining the color palette based on the guidelines and/or the style elements of the place(s) the illustration will be used, as well as determining font size and line weight (if applicable). In addition, it’s also very helpful to incorporate some principles of reuse into the workflow. I do this by attempting to re-use design motifs and elements that I might have already created for the same project or client. For example, if I am asked to illustrate a user interface on a computer, I would try to use assets that I’ve already created as a base to work off of. This saves time and contributes to a consistent design language across a client’s content library. For more information about reuse and structured content creation, see 6 Best Practices for Creating Reusable Global Content. Now, once I have a draft of the illustration, it’s time to take it to the client and see if they like and understand how I chose to visualize their ideas. 

Feedback & Refinement

The next step in my workflow is Feedback & Refinement. With any work that I do, I find that feedback can be an integral part of creating a truly amazing final product. It’s at this stage where I can learn the most about how to improve not only the illustration itself but also myself as an illustrator and artist. It’s imperative that even if I receive negative feedback that takes me back to the drawing board, I see it as a lesson and opportunity to improve. I do this by carefully noting what stands out within the feedback. What worked? What didn’t work? If any of this isn’t clear, I ask the client clarifying questions about what they would like to see. From this, I can make a game plan for revisions. After that, I go back to my Creation step and repeat the process until the client is more than happy with the result.

Conclusion

So there it is, my secret recipe for illustration success! If you decide to try my method, I would ask you to exercise the Feedback and Refinement step on your workflow. What’s working for you? What isn’t? How can you adjust and try again? Of course, everyone has a unique artistic process that works for them, and this is the workflow that works well for me. I hope that you can find some useful features to incorporate into yours.

The post Streamlining Your Illustration Workflow appeared first on Content Rules, Inc..

Welcome to this Certified Technical Writer lesson on technical writing for different industries. In this lesson we will just begin to look at the topic as technical writing covers so many industries and groups. Plus, technical writing varies from function to function and industry to industry.

To learn more about becoming a certified technical writer and earning your technical writing designation, visit our main website at http://www.BusinessTraining.com.

The original video is available here.

You’ve parachuted onto a random stretch of road. You could be anywhere in the world. How quickly can you figure out where you are?

That’s the idea behind GeoGuessr, a web game that’s occupied some — ahem, too much — of my time lately. You might find yourself on a muddy road outside an Eastern European village, a lonely highway in West Texas, or a scenic drive on the Isle of Skye. (For that one, I guessed New Zealand — exactly halfway around the world. Zero points!)

Technical writers are used to this. We parachute into our reader’s world, and we do whatever we can to orient ourselves. We try to understand their work environment, their background, and anything else that helps us communicate with them.

geoguessr_screenshot.png

A rocky coastline. A car driving on the right. Are you on Vancouver Island? Almost: you’re on the Olympic Peninsula, and that’s Vancouver Island in the distance. (Screen shot from GeoGuessr)

In GeoGuessr, you use whatever clues you can find. The game is based on Google Street view, so you can move back and forth, explore intersecting roads, and zoom in on your surroundings.

You’re looking for clues in topography, road signs (Do you recognize the language? Place names?), vegetation (Tropical? Subarctic?) — anything that would suggest or disqualify a particular location.

As technical writers, we look for clues to orient ourselves to the reader’s world. We look to:

  • Technical support: What problems are our readers having because they lack information they need?
  • Personas: What specialized knowledge do our readers have — or, more to the point, lack?
  • Sales and Marketing: What can they tell me about my reader’s needs, based on their interactions with customers?
  • Direct feedback: When that reader said she couldn’t find something, what was the real issue? Did I put it in the wrong place? Express it in terms the reader didn’t understand? Omit the keywords that would’ve helped the reader find it using Search?

As I play GeoGuessr, I learn how to better pick up clues and improve my score. In the art of technical writing, we similarly learn to orient ourselves to our reader’s world. It’s challenging. It’s even kind of fun. And there’s always room to get better.

Where do you go to learn more about your reader? Got any tips for spotting clues?

The hazards of overclaiming

I was listening to a podcast yesterday when it was interrupted with an ad that started like this:

Do you have 30 minutes to spare? Because after just one half hour, you’ll never have to worry about a break-in at home again. That’s how easy it is to set up a security system from [company name].

My editor brain froze at the point. What I heard was a claim that if you installed their system, you would not be broken into—you would be protected against burglary forever (“never have to worry”).

When we technical-edit documents at work, one of our priorities is to check for what we call overclaiming. For example, we stay on the lookout for instances of overclaiming about security, like this:

This product prevents bad actors from hacking your system.

A claim like this simply can’t be guaranteed. In the realm of security, the apparent strength of your product might just mean that a hacker hasn’t found a flaw in it yet. For example, encryption algorithms that once seemed secure enough to be used by the NSA have been cracked.

We look for overclaiming in any discussion of performance:

Using this product makes your applications three times faster.

We look for it in mentions of costs:

This product reduces your computing costs by 50 percent.

For performance claims, we warn authors that anything that states a number has to have data to back it up. If you say your product is three times faster, you better be able to produce the tests that show this. The same applies to any mention of costs: numbers, please.

And we look for it in any text that involves comparison to other products:

Our product is substantially easier to use than [competitive product].

This claim is problematic in multiple ways. First, what does “easier” even mean? Something that’s easy for me might be hard for you and vice versa. And competitive products are a moving target anyway; perhaps our product is “easier” than the current version of product X, but who knows what’s in their next release.

So naturally I stumbled over “you’ll never have to worry about a break-in at home again.” But I thought about it for a bit. First, it’s advertising copy, not a technical document on how to configure cloud computing. Maybe there’s more wiggle room for wild claims, as in, people aren’t expected to interpret these things literally.

I also homed in on the phrase “worry about.” With some work, this can be made ambiguous. One idiomatic interpretation is that it means that something won’t occur:

What if we run out of Cheetos tonight?
You don’t need to worry about that[, we just went to Costco].

A more literal interpretation is that, well, you don’t need to worry. This is the type of messaging that insurance companies use: it’s not that [thing] won’t happen, it’s that you can stop worrying about [thing happening] because insurance.

I have a hard time fitting this second meaning onto the ad copy for home security systems. But if I had to defend that statement in court, say, that’s what I’d go with.

Speaking of consequences, all of this hypervigilance about overclaiming is of course ultimately about protecting the company. The fear is not just that we’ll be shown to have been wrong. (“Sorry.”) When people spend vast sums based on assurances that you’ve given them about security or performance or cost, and when those assurances don’t prove true, they might take a litigious turn of mind. At the very least, they’re not going to trust you in the future and might look elsewhere to spend their money.

I’m not personally aware of the various companies I’ve worked for being hauled into court to defend an assertion. (“You said we wouldn’t be hacked!”) But clearly the lawyercats think about this a lot, and I’ve certainly participated in my share of fire drills in which we dropped everything to grub through many documents, tweaking some text that was discovered to be overclaim-y.

I would not be surprised to hear an ad from the same company a year from now in which the claim “you don’t need to worry about break-ins” has been hedged to something like “Get yourself some peace of mind.” If I were editing their copy, that’s definitely what would happen.

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