Tuesday, March 29, 2016

documentation - Does UX apply to other documents, such as Word or Spreadsheets?


Does UX apply to documents such as a Word document, or a PowerPoint presentation?


In other words, should the writer take into consideration the readers' experience of the document?



Answer



It does, in the sense that it's important for the document to be clear, structured and readable. The principles of good technical writing are eventually aimed at providing good UX for the reader (short paragraphs, a funnel structure, coherent navigation within the document etc).


The same goes for spreadsheets - if your user/reader can't find his way around the spreadsheet and a lot of different data is stuck into the same sheet, that's bad UX.


But few people realize these things and treat them as such - and it definitely doesn't mean that any UX person is good at writing or at designing word documents and spreadsheets. They often don't realize that they should be guided by the same principles when working on that, and it's a skill like any other.



It also doesn't mean that technical writers are automatically good UX people :)


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