Anu Singh, Fiserv
February 1, 2021
Let’s begin with the Industrial Revolution that started off with the manufacturing industry and the heart of the revolution was laid around productivity, scale, automation, and use of technology. With the advent of time, this industrial revolution transformed into a technology revolution that fosters personalized experiences with more on-demand supply at a reduced cost.
The focus of Industry 4.0 expanded itself to include optimization of resources for enhanced efficiency, product distribution using multiple platforms while emphasizing localization and turning the overall experience to be the One-Stop solution using a single window approach. As we are ever-evolving, this One-Stop solution has manifested itself beyond manufacturing and is relevant to almost every industry now including the technical content industry.
We live in a technology world that is super flooded with information, and with the recent COVID-19 experiences, it is important to curate information effectively to discover the humane side of technology. This also highlights the need to bring in the concept of a One-Stop solution that Industry 4.0 uses and apply it to the content industry. This means that we need to build content based on what the user needs with the technology they are using rather than delivering content as a standard package. The traditional PDFs must be complemented by technology and new content products that use multi-media and multi-platform.
This is an important aspect to consider as with the more intuitive products and smart devices, creating a personalized experience with the content that is credible, concise and usable to the content consumer is needed. Using and integrating the new edge technology with content helps in including the content component and human component to accomplish the strategic and tactical plans for the organization.
Like the manufacturing industry, we also need to reorganize our content to create an information-consumer base and reach people with content that matters to them – where, when, and how they want it – to feel safe, connected with a feeling of accomplishment. It is critical to look at information from a completely different perspective and instead of focusing on product features and technical details, let’s begin to look at how people feel when they use products and consume information. This detail is important as people use technology differently at different times during the day.
As a Technical Communicator, we now need to create a core creative concept and tie all our content to an experience that is well-aligned with the overall product experience and an organization’s content strategy as well. We now need to take a minimalistic approach to remove unnecessary, overly complex words, repetitions, pompous or unnecessarily formal writing, or vague writing and support the product adoption journey of a user for their success in their own chosen field. The new-age users want to get their job done than knowing the system. They ask more than ever now and need help in troubleshooting a problem or inevitable error they make.
Building content to create personalized experiences that balance information by providing quick access to accurate information that is easy to understand is now the key to success. Following the patterns of Industry 4.0, the Technical Content Industry needs to calibrate per-page cost as well as on-demand accessibility to the information in the world of Alexas, Podcasts, and Bots.
This is the new Technical Content Industry 4.0, and from the language of the product origination, we are shifting to the language of users.