Goals of the Course

We will work on writing, revising and testing computer documentation, both paper and online. The focus is on end-user documentation, although the principles involved in many cases apply as well to systems documentation.

The course readings will help you to:

• become familiar with the research done on what makes software documentation effective
• learn a generally applicable and flexible technique for designing software documentation
• investigate techniques for testing and revising existing documentation.

Class projects and assignments will allow you apply these theoretical skills in the design, evaluation and testing of actual software documentation.