In a GenAI-powered world, it is incumbent on us, writers, to reevaluate the role and expectations from documentation in product organizations.
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For far too long we have focused on communicating procedures to users while the world has moved on from geeky command-line interfaces to seriously user-friendly graphical interfaces. The stubborn refusal to evolve documentation to keep pace has led to a near banishment of documentation to the furthest edges of the product development universe. Over the past two decades, UI design has rendered most traditional documentation redundant. The UI of most products is, or should be, optimized for the most common use cases. For instance, CRUD operations - users should be able to perform these actions with minimal help from documentation. This approach gives us two benefits - it keeps the documentation thin and ensures focus on the complicated task rather than letting it be lost in all the noise.
A good analogy to understand the changing expectations is to look at how sports commentary has evolved. From ball-by-ball or pass-by-pass commentary, today's sports commentators are expected to provide context for the game.
There is a similar expectation of product documentors. In most products the user experience is good enough for most users to complete tasks without the documentation telling them that to add a record they must click Add. So where does that leave us? When someone complains about poor documentation, they are usually looking for something that isn't a straightforward process. This often turns out to be the more difficult areas of the software. So why are we spending time documenting the obvious stuff? Why not focus on the more complex, difficult-to-understand stuff?
It is not too hard to imagine a world where the UI moves away from the traditional menu and action-based interface to a more conversational one. For instance, instead of starting MS-Word, and then using the menu combo of File > New; we might have a box on the OS interface where we type "Open a new Word document".
Once we accept this is possible and inevitable, then we can begin to expect these systems to perform more complex tasks. For instance, in an Employee Management System (EMS), we might say, "Rahul has resigned. Process his relieving activities." This will kick off a set of activities within the system without human intervention.
As writers, we must begin to think about how we fit into this world. For instance, will we still need to document procedures? Will people still use user guides or manuals? What are the metrics we should track? The answers to these questions may not be clear at the moment because we don't have enough information. But we should be asking the questions.
Personally, I believe user manuals and help sites will no longer be customer-facing content. All the customer will see, should see, is an interface to interact with the bot.
That said, onboarding and setup documentation will grow in prominence. For AI to be successful, users must have guidance on how best to organize their systems, processes, and data. I also see the use of simple procedure documentation as a fail-safe. Very much like how we carry a notebook and pen in our laptop bags.
Deflection of support tickets will become a key metric. Writers will be expected to track tickets that the bot could not resolve, identify the reason for the bot's failure, and fix the documentation to enable the bot to answer the same question the next time someone asks.
As AI permeates and becomes ubiquitous, the role of the technical writer will become critical. For instance, if something on the UI has changed but the documentation doesn't reflect the change, the bot will throw an incorrect answer. Enough incorrect answers and the user will stop trusting the system.
Will the number of writers reduce? Definitely. But we have time simply because most of the software out there is written so badly that these changes will not happen overnight. So until they fix their code, the industry will continue to need the bandage our documentation provides.
Documentors Unplugged is a podcast dedicated to conversations on technical writing, product documentation, and related subjects. If this interests you, subscribe here.
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