Preeti Savanur, Principal Technical Writer of OpenText, joins us in this episode of Knowledgebase Ninja’s and shares her experience on the importance of interactive technical content and technological advancements. Check out all the other episodes of Knowledgebase Ninja’s here.
Connect with Preeti Savanur of OpenText here:
Key Takeaways
Self-employment journey
With an extensive experience of 18+ years in the industry, Preeti possesses strong skills in various technical writing areas such as user documentation management, content recreation, user experience and user researcher roles.
Preeti applies her extensive knowledge of industry practices and standards to her work which makes her a reputable technical writing expert. Currently, she is contributing her skills and continuously adding value to technical documentation at OpenText.
A unique documentation process
Preeti explains her standard documentation approach in detail as the significant role of user interactions and agile approach in ascertaining the project scope, project plan and entire project management that she uses to complete any documentation lifecycle.
She puts a lot of focus on the necessity of understanding the user requirements by highlighting the three important factors that she keeps in consideration through the document lifecycle:
- User perception of a developed feature
- Content production for an adequate understanding of the feature
- Useful reviews to ensure accuracy and high quality of the content
The best way to ensure the effectiveness of the content consumption is to take the technical content with a very diverse perspective of user experience, and Preeti applies this concept broadly in her documentation management.
Technical content followed by UX
Preeti believes there is an utmost necessity for a thorough understanding of the product and its lifecycle before any content is created. This understanding would result in the creation of a content that would guide and help the end-users to use the product effectively.
The content will only have value if the technical writer is deeply involved in the complete production process, including but not limited to scoping, interaction with cross-functional teams, project planning, developments, and quality controls, say Preeti.
A technical writer needs to come out of the comfort zone, and after going through the whole process, the technical writer can devise a content strategy with the project team. Any content produced in this manner shall bring a lot of great user experience for the product.
Efficacy of conversational UI
Preeti shares her technical views on the user experiences for effective usability of products and features. Given that the visual UI frameworks do not meet the comprehensive requirements of today’s end-level expectations, Preeti focuses a lot on the concept of conversational UI. She mentions in detail that any product, having the support for conversational UI, will have a great content experience for the users.
Preeti describes a lot about the two broad categories of chatbots. The first one has a particular set of defined rules that would respond to certain specific commands; the chatbots of this category maps the question of a specific response within the framework. The second category of chatbots is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bots. These are self-learning bots that gain their experience over the period for better responses after analysing the user requirements.
Preeti explains the concepts of an entity, intent, and response concerning the frameworks that models basic bots. Defining a repository of predefined responses is the best way to enhance user experience based on the context and intents of the user, and this will be effective if there is a comprehensive mapping between the entity and intents within the framework.
Impact of technological innovations on workload
Preeti shares her views on the improvised technological advancements that have made it a lot easier to reuse the content to enhance the information experience of the users without requiring complete content reinvention.
Preeti takes it as a reduction in workload if the product brings the best customer experience and reduction in product support. She emphasizes on it rather than the efforts any content writing or product management team would put in.
Who has inspired Preeti in technical writing?
- Dr (HC) Sai Kavitha Krishnalyengar and co-workers.
Preeti’s favourite documentation related resource:
Subscribe to Knowledgebase Ninjas
Quote:
–