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Minimum Viable Documentation by Matthew Lyon @mattly Write the Docs 2014 Portland, Oregon
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what is a minimum viable product?
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“building software is expensive & risky” – money sloth
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test the feasibility of an idea
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by building as little as possible
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minimum viable
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early adopters mainstream users
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“No wireless. Less space than a nomad Lame.” – slashdot, on the iPod
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what is the purpose of software?
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“software helps solve problems” – product sloth
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it has to work better than existing solutions
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“printing a form, filling it out, and faxing it in is less hassle than the Adobe Plugin” – me, about coveroregon.com
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how do we help people solve problems?
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“we’ll provide a good user experience” – design sloth
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As a _____________ I want to ____________ so I can ____________ do something user be awesome
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getting their world requires empathy
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how are people going to interpret this interface?
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how are people going to interpret these words?
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how are developers using empathy to help themselves?
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“I want to know when a change breaks something” – code sloth
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“what was I thinking when I wrote this two months ago?” – code sloth
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pair with new developers to document difficult things as they have questions
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who are your users? what do they want to do?
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reference docs are an outboard memory
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learn how to forget
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how can you help them to do what they want?
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how can you help them to do what they want?
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HOWTOs work with user experience design
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link to HOWTOs from your marketing site
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link to HOWTOs from your new user experience
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use your HOWTOs to regression test your user experience
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use your HOWTOs to keep a handle on UX debt
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how can tech writers be proactive in lean development?
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some developers started writing their tests first and then the code
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what if you thoroughly prototyped your user experience in words?