Kate sounds off on docs hierarchy of needs and how we talk to ourselves

The Not-Boring Tech Writer

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In this solo episode, Kate shares an update on working with content types, muses about the idea of a Documentation Hierarchy of Needs, and reflects more on Janine Chan’s interview (S3:E4) and how we talk to ourselves about being tech writers.

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I may have overcommitted myself in Episode 3. I have been incorporating content type work into my massive content audit, but after working on four of the nineteen Features subcategories, I realized it was taking too much time and I had to refocus on my main task of updating content to match our UI and navigation releases. However, I like the information architecture decisions this has helped me make and the clarity it’s bringing to the docs themselves and how I organize them, so it’s a project I intend to continue.

Making these kinds of priority decisions is something we all have to tackle all the time. But the content type work got me thinking: I’ve used an intuitive content type sense for a long time. I suspect I’m also using an intuitive decision-making framework for prioritizing my docs work. What would an explicit framework for that look like? In talking this over with a colleague, I realized I wanted a Documentation Hierarchy of Needs. I discovered that MongoDB created exactly this for their documentation overhaul once upon a time and wrote this blog post about it. I briefly run through their Hierarchy of Needs and how my decision to temporarily deprioritize content types might fit within it.

I also reflect more on Janine Chan’s episode (S3:E4) and her point about reframing the way we talk to ourselves from “I’m not technical enough” to “I don’t know how to do this… yet.” And I share my own suggestion for handling that narrative problem.

Resources discussed in this episode:

KnowledgeOwl Support KB, Features category
MongoDB blog post: Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Documentation
TNBTW Episode 3 and Episode 4

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