My Tryst with Technical Writing

Fall 2021 being my graduating semester, I had all courses related to my Computer
Engineering major and a few technical electives. The technical writing course was a breath of
fresh air as I got to let my creative juices flow for the assignments and papers. I had the
opportunity to pose as an employee for a federal organization, write an instruction manual, a
white paper, memo and email for a product or service that was my own solution to a problem and
convince an internal audience to incorporate it. I got to polish my resume and cover letter for job
applications with feedback received from my peers and the instructor. I also had the opportunity
to create an engagement project that utilized augmented reality and tailor a story for it. Through
it all, I have been challenged and forced to think in multiple directions to come up with solutions.
I believe this has helped improve my writing during the course of the semester. When we
started the course, I knew what technical writing comprised, but I was not completely aware on
how to go about describing domain expertise related to a product or service. Through the
instructions packet, I learnt how to develop a module for a product’s usage instructions. This
gave me a lot of insight in how to make a product or service easy to understand for the user and
enable them to learn how to use it step by step easily. It also made me appreciate the work that is
done to make a product or service manual as it takes effort to break down the instructions in
simple and easy language for people from different walks of life to understand. Through the
white paper and workplace correspondence projects, I was able to understand the professional
requirements of writing for an internal audience. A big aspect of the course was peer feedback
and reviews. These peer reviews really helped gauge how my peers viewed my work, understand
their constructive criticisms and work on it. Moreover, I learnt how to articulate and give proper
feedback as well. Most importantly, through my instructor’s feedback, I got a deeper insight into
carving and formulating the right problem statement, and always clearly stating the purpose
behind the white paper, memo, or an email.
My main goal for this course was to build my technical writing competence and be able to
communicate ideas in a conducive manner for other team members and peers to understand. I
want to improve my writing to clearly convey ideas in a conducive manner for any report I write.
Through the technical writing course, I have been able to progress and build this competence.
From learning about the types of audience and how to tailor the writing to the kind of audience
one is writing for, to learning design specifications such as the use of whitespace, I have evolved
in writing reports and can confidently write any report, white paper, or memo. A valuable skill I
have learnt is to create a buffer in emails and clearly state the purpose of the report being written.
This has enabled me to be creative in writing and define the task and purpose clearly for the
audience addressed to understand.
I take the most pride in my white paper. The reaktion book I chose for the semester was
Earthquakes and for the white paper assignment, I decided to write for the US Geological Survey
(USGS) about creating an earthquake safety plan and implementing it for people living in
earthquake prone regions. In this assignment, I researched different protocols and procedures
followed by the federal agencies and then came up with my own safety plan to be used by the
USGS. Designing the cover page and adding other features to the paper, made for an interesting
read. Adding a purpose to the white paper was challenging and intriguing as I had to put myself
in the shoes of a USGS official and determine the value of the paper. However, this proved to be
fruitful, and I was able to complete the document with a good flow and narrative style.
An assignment that I would like to add to this course would be writing Application
Programming Interface (API) documentation. Being in the technological and engineering
industry, one has to keep updating their technical-know how and be aware of different
applications and their APIs introduced every day. The documentation for APIs is not always
easy-to-understand and requires careful consideration of the application. Therefore, writing API
documentation for Facebook, LinkedIn or Snapchat would give a basic overview of how APIs
are written and enable me to write good documentation for APIs in the field. Further, an
assignment that I would love to edit would be the Engagement Project. I thoroughly enjoyed
doing it and I believe that instead of having a common topic, one could let the students decide
their own topic and unleash their creativity on a problem they want to solve. The engagement
project would then include projects from all domains and if allowed to view other peer projects,
one could learn and gain valuable information.
Overall, I truly had a great experience in the Technical Writing course. I am glad I got to be a
part of different projects from the vicinity of my house and develop writing and communication
skills. I will carry this forward in every domain of my work and goals.