Maring

Loved the masterclass today with Mercer and Ben! 🎉 Hopefully we can all thank AI one day for the downfall of the endless FAQ page?! Is that too much wishful thinking? If you know me, you know I get a little excited, if not giddy, around the topic of support and content. And I especially wanted to share some resources in relation to the last question about multiple articles on the same topic. It really is hard to keep content concise when you have a lot to say about one thing - I like comparing the issue to looking for one quick yet broadly useful recipe about making a lasagna from scratch. Sometimes there are just a lot of steps and things to know. Diátaxis addresses that exact issue for technical writers, and I created my own adaptation for general user audiences last year. At it's core, it provides a visual framework for determining article types based on the user needs that your content is attempting to meet. I recently gave a talk about clarifying article types using this approach that gives a few visuals and a decision tree that's been very useful for me in deciding what to write/who should write it. (Because, as was mentioned, there's definitely some overlap of informative content across teams.) I'd created this page with the slides and additional resources if anyone wants to check it out - I've also linked my 'novela' on the subject if you're interested in how I worked through the idea and put it into practice. If anyone has any questions, thoughts, whatever, please do let me know! https://contentbymfe.com/help-center/clarify-article-types-talk/

I'm late on sharing, but today the Sensemakers club is hosting a "Sensemakers Salon" as a half-day taste of what the club can be like. There are 4 blocks of half-hour sessions, so you could participate as much or as little as you want! Not sure if I've shared about it here before, but it's a really cool community that hosts daily meetups on a wide variety of topics. Abby Covert created it a little over a year ago. (She's an information architect, and I highly recommend her book, How to make sense of any mess!) The club isn't really support related, more of a fun and nerdy corner of the internet that largely includes folks in content, research, information architecture, and design as well as a lot of consultants. Support stuff certainly comes up related to certain topics, and it would never hurt to get more of our voices in there! But I'm mostly sharing because it hits on a lot of the same positive vibes happening in this community 🙌 I'm pretty active over there (I lead coworking-related meetups + facilitate one of the discussion topics each month), so if anyone is interested or has any questions, please feel free to bug me about it!

If anyone is looking for resources around help center strategy, my course with UXCC is currently 25% off til Sunday! https://uxcontent.com/fundamentals-of-support-content/