Writing and Editing with AI

The following is an exercise with OpenAI’s ChatGPT demonstrating its drafting and editing capabilities.

I wrote the following document describing the three most important aspects of technical documentation:

Three Important Aspects of Technical Documentation

Know Your Audience

Write to your audience. Create a persona. Understand what your audience needs to know so that you can write clearly and concisely and stay on topic.
When writing a document, keep your audience in mind. If your audience is a vague persona, your documentation will not be concise and to the point. For example, I am writing a user guide for a non-technical audience and should use familiar terminology and define technical words.

Research Your Topic

Research your topic. Understand the product feature that you are writing about by testing that feature if possible. Read all documentation and notes that you can find such as technical specifications, release notes, design documents. If you have the opportunity, discuss the new product, or features with engineers, subject matter experts, and other designers. Take good notes and later reference these along with any additional information.

Draft a Clear Outline

Write a clear and concise outline that includes all aspects of your topic. Review it. Have other users review it. Review it with your stakeholders before you begin drafting the content. Discuss the outline and topics with the stakeholders to ensure that you have a clear understanding of what needs to be documented. Define what, where, when, why, and how about the product or feature.

The three most important pieces of technical writing are understanding your audience, researching your topic, and writing clear and concise content.

Then entered the following prompt in ChatGPT “What are the three most important aspects of technical documentation?” The following screenshot includes the prompt and the output from the chatbot.