Getting Reviewers to Give You Useful Reviews
One of the major frustrations of technical communicators is getting reviewers to make useable comments and getting those reviews back on time.
Honoring the Talents of Others So That They Can Honor Yours
I've learned that subject matter experts (SMEs), whether engineers, programmers, lawyers, or other professionals, sometimes perceive the technical communicator as “a know-it-all” because we change their words. For example, an engineer who wrote the original specifications may feel that because she understands all these technical items, the end users should, too. The engineer may not realize that end users do not understand acronyms and esoteric terminology. Or a programmer may have written the first set of documentation and have an ownership issue with changes.
Also, SMEs may not get much recognition for their hard work on a project and are reluctant to take on more work just because you ask them to. Their managers may expect them to take time out from what they like to do to read a user manual or to do reviews “after hours.”
When you can get involved with a project at the beginning, you can encourage the customer to build review time into the schedule. You can also tell the customer, the engineers, the programmers, and anyone else who works on the project that you are not the expert in engineering or programming or whatever, but that you are the expert in how end users think, read, and use documentation or training material. Tell them that you are relying on their expertise for correct content and easy functionality, and you hope they will trust you with the usability of the manual. In other words, honor the talents of others so that they will honor yours.
No Useful Comments: Problem and Solutions
Sometimes reviewers send document back with a note, “Looks really great!” And you think, “Well of course it looks great, but is it correct?” Desktop publishing packages, Web page design software, and multimedia authoring systems enable us to create truly lovely and exciting pages or screens. The beautiful appearance can fool a reviewer into thinking it is not necessary to read the words and check the figures. You do not want to be responsible for the correctness of the content in your projects, but if your project gets out there with mistakes, you look like a fool regardless of who is responsible. So, warn your reviewers that the pages may be beautiful, but that they still need to check the content.
If you are distributing paper copy to reviewers, you might try asking them to follow these tips:
- Write comments directly on the pages. Use a color different from the print. Green, blue, red. Anything except pencil (too dim to see easily) or black (same as print color). An editor's pencil (transparent blue) is no good either unless they are editing a final, camera ready copy.
- Tell the reviewers that you have deliberately included false information somewhere in the material, and their challenge is to find and correct it. Try this with reviewers who you already know tend not to read your material. I did this once by including the names of the reviewers in graphic captions, by putting very obviously incorrect, and funny, data in a chart, and so on. You have to know the people to make this technique work, but humor is better than nagging. Offer a prize (a highlighter, a pocket protector, a mouse pad) for the one who finds each error first. They'll read it and they'll read it fast.
For groups of reviewers you might try these ideas:
- Pass around one copy, each reviewer adding his or her own comments, like a round robin letter.
- Distribute separate copies, but enlist one person to consolidate the comments onto one copy before giving it back to you. This person can also settle conflicting comments. Send thank you notes to the reviewers and copy their managers when the project is over. Take everybody to lunch if you can afford it. Give them a pen with your company name on it.