How to explain to your grandparents what a Technical Communicator does?

My grandma:
— So, what do you do again?

Me:
— Nanna, I’m a Technical Communicator…

Part 1. How to explain

The question seems simple, but as technologies and business have become complicated, job titles no longer define themselves as they used to sometime in the 1950–80s. The word “communicator” helps… a little bit… But “technical communicator” may not ring a bell…

It can be tough to describe your professional role to people who don’t know your industry in the first place. But what’s more interesting, even being in IT does not guarantee the awareness on the Technical Communicator’s responsibilities. Thus, when I’ve joined my first project as a Technical Communicator (TC), my teammates — Developers, QAs, and DevOps — confessed that they had no idea what my role was and what exact value a TC could bring. (By the way, you too, make sure your teammates know how useful you are for the project.)

Also, it doesn’t help that there are a lot of different definitions in the industry. The role of a Technical Communicator is varied, it can often be split into subcategories and have the following job titles:

Part 2. What does a Technical Communicator do

Let’s take a closer look at what Technical Communicators usually do. And here is the first catch… The thing is, a TC can do absolutely different things depending on the company and the project. It. All. Depends.

Here is a long list of what a TC can do:

· Create external, user-facing documentation (user guides, installation manuals, release notes)

· Help with other external deeply-technical documentation (Disaster Recovery Plan, for example)

· Work on API documentation

· Create internal onboarding materials

· Create educational, training, and marketing materials (visual content, including playbooks, demo videos, product roadmaps, infographics)

· Handle localization and translation

· Review internal project documentation created by PMs, BAs, Devs

· Review the products and suggest improvements on the UI/UX and microcopy writing

· and many-many other things

Pretty impressive! Isn’t it?

I like to say that a Technical Communicator = traditional Technical Writer + Graphical Designer + UI/UX Writer + Content Writer + a lil bit of BA and QA. (At least, that’s how I see myself on the current project.)

Well, most luckily, your nanna doesn’t know how Business Analysts and Quality Assurance Engineers earn their daily bread either. So, we can leave this piece of explanation between us, for now. Or… We can use it for the “Introduction to the world of TCs” speech for the teammates and IT friends.

Anyway… Let’s get back to our main line. What was I talking about? Ah, right!

Part 3. And now finally about grandparents

You know that old saying: “If you can’t explain something to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself”? I’d paraphrase it to: “…if you can’t explain it to a child or a grandparent”.

So… How can one explain to the grandparents or elderly relatives the peculiarities of the Technical Communicator’s work? To tell the truth, it took me a few rounds of talks to clear it up even for my parents (who are more familiar with Informational Technologies).

The first thing to understand is this. The reason your grandma asks this question is because she wants to make sure you’re doing something with your life and earning enough money to support yourself.

So, there is no need to spice up your explanations with complicated technical details trying to impress her. Avoid jargon and IT slang. Don’t tell her about stakeholders, help authoring tools, daily stand-ups, or Scrum.

Simplify your everyday responsibilities and lay out the end result of your work. Following these suggestions, I eventually came up with this simple example. And here is what I said to my grandma:

Let’s imagine a new TV. When you buy a new TV, inside the cardboard box, there is a paper brochure saying how to plug the TV in, how to switch channels, adjust the volume, etc. This brochure, this instruction, is the result of a TC’s work.

Technical Communicators structure information, analyze, and document processes. Most of the time, we are writing texts and creating visuals that help people understand how things work and how to use them. (And sometimes we do other things from the bulleted list in Part 2.) We kind of communicate technical information to other people.

In a nutshell, we inform, connect, and engage.

That’s it. This is the big picture that should suffice for your grandma to smile and think: “Yep, I knew it! That grandchild of mine is doing just fine”.

After that explanation, you can get back to eating your granny’s awesome apple-cinnamon pie feeling satisfied by answering a complicated question and by making your granny smile.

P.S. Don’t get upset if nanna forgets what you talked about last time. She may forget the details of your work, but the general impression will remain.