Bringing the Arts and Humanities to Tech

Presented by: Jonathan Foster, Principal Content Experience Manager with Microsoft

With the growing pervasiveness of AI, not to mention inescapable digital experiences, we need to ensure humanness in what we create and present to the world. For writers and content designers in tech, this means a transformation away from technical writing to content design that focuses on people. Jonathan Foster will share his story of how designing Cortana’s personality led him to an epiphany around why writers from the Arts and Humanities are needed now more than ever.

Contributed by Rorie Anders

Overview

As Jonathan Foster explains, we know that people have the tendency to anthropomorphize objects which often leads to the development of some sort of emotional connection to the object. Additionally, we know or have seen that technology has evolved to creating objects that enable human-like experiences. But, what is often left unknown is how those experiences can affect us. Through his work at Microsoft, Jonathan has focused on designing and exemplifying the concept of personality in his work on Cortana (virtual assistant developed by Microsoft) and Personality Chat for Microsoft's Bot Framework.

According to Jonathan Foster, personality is a lot like voice and tone and he discovered that as a company, Microsoft needed to cultivate a more empathetic relationship through their writing with their customers. It is this emotional response from their customers that they wanted to place a greater focus. It was then that Jonathan realized the need for different talent to build upon these emotional relationships. He believed that artistic people, creative writers, were well-suited for these kinds of challenges, finding ways to connect with someone's mind or heart, and then see how the system responds. Jonathan noted that by building out this group of people that know how to approach this work is the best way to start. Where there head is at is a great starting point to understanding how to treat humans well.

Bottom Line: We need the right talent to do this, and we need to look for it in new places.

Key takeaways & Reflection

For me, a big takeaway from Jonathan's presentation speaks to the importance of establishing the appropriate voice and tone of one's writing as a means of connecting with your target audience. Within Jonathan's presentation, he used the example of Microsoft's "Blue Screen of Death" or the error screen. Most individuals have experienced this screen at some point in their life and feel some sort of dread just by looking at it.

Before, when Microsoft used this screen to indicate an issue with the computer, the writing and presentation of the screen:

• Acted as if the user wasn't present;
• Used the term "crashdump" which means nothing to an everyday user; and
• Placed blame upon the user -- "The end-user manually generated the crashdump."

As Jonathan notes, Microsoft wasn't thinking about people.

So Microsoft decided to take an alternative approach to the issue and redesigned the screen, which ultimately elicited a different experience. * The wording was rephrased to say that the PC was the one that ran into the problem, not the user. * They incorporated a QR code as a means of providing more help and utilized more easy and accessible forms of technical support. * They even threw in a frowny-face emoticon.

Personally, I believe that it is these types of considerations that we, as Technical Communicators, need to factor into our work. Our audience plays a significant role in how we choose to present the information and what kind of experience we want to set up for that user.

I think another key takeaway is the benefit of diversifying one's writing skills and incorporating more creative outlets as writers. Within his presentation, Jonathan showed how Microsoft searches for new talent to join their team and specifically called out the requirement - "Experience writing for instructional, conversational, and storytelling purposes (e.g., creative fiction, playwriting, screenwriting, journalism, interpretative/museum design)". For me, I see this as a way companies can value future candidates who exhibit different skills that can benefit the role, the team, and the company as a whole. I find it as a means of encouragement to not pigeonhole myself and my abilities, and find other ways I can bring value to my work and my team. Additionally, I think this empowers us as students to take creative license in our writings for this (and all) courses. Now is a great time to experiment, learn, and really sharpen those skills that will carry us through in our careers as Technical Communicators.

Resource to Share

Jonathan Foster shared a channel that he and a colleague started on Medium (online open platform) called code:words.

What is code:words? A collective effort focused on elevating and amplifying every aspect of writing in the tech industry including: content design, content strategy, storytelling, documentation, UX, and more. Whether you’re a current, prospective, or aspiring tech writer, this curated effort is created and built by you.

Check out code:words at https://medium.com/words-in-tech/.