Technically Speaking

I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but this “quiz” went around at work the other day, and I found it amusing…

My results:
I am Superman

Superman 80% Spider-Man 60% Green Lantern 55% Robin 55% The Flash 45% Iron Man 35% Hulk 35% Batman 30% Wonder Woman 28% Supergirl 28% Catwoman 15%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

It has come to my attention that yesterday’s post came across as being more bitter than I intended. This is what I get for not editing my posts before I save them. Oh well.

So, I was mostly being sarcastic. My Wal-Mart ban lasted for all of 24 hours, which is because I don’t shop on Sunday. Today being Monday, I’m planning on going to Wal-Mart to pick up some photos I printed from my computer. If I have time, I may swing past the other, new Wal-Mart to see if they carry my style J vacuum bags.

Wal-Mart is still my first choice for most of the basic home supplies that we use on a regular basis. It’s still my first choice for school supplies, and many of the groceries we buy monthly. I simply can’t beat their prices. Unless of course, they don’t carry what you need, in which case, you have to go elsewhere. And I don’t buy any produce from Wal-Mart, as it seems to always be more expensive than produce at my local grocery store.

However, my post wasn’t all in jest. I do prefer the baby section at Target to the baby section at Wal-Mart.

So, Wal-Mart, can we still be friends?

Dear Wal-Mart,

I thought I would let you know that after all my rooting, support, championing of your cause, and even voting for you, you really let me down yesterday.

Wal-Mart, you are supposed to be the one-stop shopping destination, where I can go to get anything I need for my household. Have you got the cleaning solution I need? Check. How about small appliances? Check. What if I need a vacuum? Check. Couch covers? Check. Laundry detergent? Check. School supplies? Check. Garage-door opener batteries? Check. Eureka Style J vacuum bags? Um, not so check.

In fact, you, my beloved cursed local Wal-Mart don’t stock Eureka Style J vacuum bags anymore. It’s not that you were just temporarily out of stock. There wasn’t even a spot for them on the shelves. I checked all your tags.

Nope. Style J got crowded out by the style A standard, and the style A ritzy. And the style Q standard, and the style Q ritzy. Did you know there are multiple versions of vacuum bags now? Yep. No longer just one option for your size. Now there are different grades of vacuum bag.

And in order to accommodate the varieties within sizes, Wal-Mart, you gave my J style the axe.

Well. Wal-Mart, we are through. It’s been a nice ride. But I’m going to Target. I like their baby- supplies selection better anyway.

So there.

The other day I listened to an NPR article that discussed a concept called “the curse of knowledge” (Need reference/citation). The basic foundation of the concept was that the irony is that the more you know about a subject, the harder it is for you to explain it to somebody who doesn’t “get” it.

This isn’t a wholly new concept for me, but I’ve never heard it described that way. I think the first time I really saw this concept at work was when I was taking Calculus in college. Who is it who teaches calculus at the university level? The answer: people who loved math so much that they couldn’t think of anything they’d rather do with their lives than teach it to other people. These are people, for the most part, who have always “gotten” math. I suspect that generally, it has always been easy for them. Yet these are the people that are teaching math to the rest of us. (I was an English major, in part, because of my college calculus class.)

The concept of “knowledege curse” is a subject that should interest technical writers as well. After all, we are the user advocates who produce documentation, translating the product into concepts that common users can understand and use. Yet don’t we also suffer from the knowledge curse? I work in software documentation. I have to know my software inside and out in order to understand the complex relationships between various parts of the applications. Here’s the trouble, though: The more I learn about the products we sell, the harder it is for me to write about them in a way that non-experts will understand.

This is why audience analysis is so important for technical writers. And its why good technical writers are those who can overcome the curse of knowledge to produce documentation that non-experts can understand and use with ease.

Good documentation is hard to write, and it is hard to find. Too many writers are cursed with so much knowledge about the product they are documenting that it is very difficult to make it easy for others to understand.

Do you think that “knowledge curse” is real? How do you think it can be overcome?