Applying Minimalism in the Real World : Results From a Workshop

Abstract

Minimalism is a user-centered, contextual and goal-oriented approach to technical communication originally developed by John M. Carroll (1990). In minimalism, the aim is to produce user documentation that focuses on the user’s needs, helps the user recover from error situations, and strengthens the user’s skills in working with the system (Carroll & van der Meij 1995: 245). The challenge with minimalism has been its practical application: although user-centeredness – the core of minimalism – is the key issue in technical communication, the abstract nature of the approach and its focus on software documentation has made it difficult to apply in industry settings (Virtaluoto, Suojanen & Isohella 2018; Virtaluoto, Suojanen & Isohella, forthcoming). Consequently, there is very little evidence on the suitability of minimalism for software documentation and no evidence at all for hardware documentation. In this article, we explore the application of minimalism to heavy industry machinery end-user instructions through a workshop with technical communication professionals. In the workshop, the participants reviewed heavy industry machinery enduser instructions using a revised set of minimalism heuristics as a practical review tool (Virtaluoto, Suojanen & Isohella, forthcoming). The results show that the revised minimalism heuristics were applicable to heavy industry machinery end-user instructions, but further development ideas were also suggested.