What is it?
Attributes of content you can use to structure, semantically define, and target content.
Why is it important?
Metadata extends the capabilities of content, making it more powerful and effecting efficient operation in a data-driven world.
Category: Core Concepts
Term of the Week: Governance Model
What is it?
Guidelines that determine who has ownership and responsibility for various aspects of an organization.
Why is it important?
A governance model makes it clear who has authority to make which decisions about content and contributes to smooth operational decisions and processes.
Term of the Week: Business Analysis
What is it?
A research discipline that provides strategic solutions to business needs by analyzing changing markets and industry trends.
Why is it important?
Business analysis helps technical communicators better understand the audience they are writing for and helps them align content goals with strategic business goals, thus increasing product value and consumer loyalty.
Term of the Week: Project Management
What is it?
Everything needed to complete (or end) a temporary effort, preferably with schedule, budget, scope, quality, and risk constraints in balance.
Why is it important?
Writing well is just the start. You also have to organize and deliver your work on time and on budget, in a way that leaves your collaborators willing to work with you again.
Term of the Week: User Experience
What is it?
The overall outcome of a user’s interaction with a product, service, or organization across all touch-points, experienced through the lens of the user’s personal background and preferences.
Why is it important?
User experience is the comprehensive, holistic measurement of organizational performance and understanding of the market, because every user is unique and any link in the chain can harm their experience.
Term of the Week: User Assistance
What is it?
A broad term for describing the different forms of content that can help people use a software application or other technological product correctly.
Why is it important?
User assistance places the work that technical communicators do within the framework of user-centered design, of improving the experience of a user, rather than seeing that work as simply creating manuals.
Term of the Week: Intelligent Content
What is it?
Content that is modular, structured, reusable, format-free, and semantically rich and, as a consequence, discoverable, reconfigurable, and adaptable.
Why is it important?
Intelligent content enables organizations to rapidly adapt their content to the changing needs of their customers and the devices they use.
Term of the Week: Document
What is it?
A self-contained unit of information, most often with text-intensive content in printed or digital formats. In its broadest sense, a document can also include audio, video, or interactive content as well as text. We can even stretch this definition to fit documents that are enhanced with sensing, computational, and communications capabilities, such as augmented reality documents that overlay context-sensitive information on their base content.
Why is it important?
Documents organize the interactions between people, between people and enterprises and institutions, and between the machines and computers that are ubiquitous and essential in today’s information-intensive world.
Term of the Week: Content
What is it?
Any text, image, video, decoration, or user-consumable elements that contribute to comprehension.
Why is it important?
Content is the single most-used way of understanding an organization’s products or services, stories, and brand.