Technical Communicators, Get ready: Here comes Augmented Reality! Rhonda Truitt

The importance of technical communicators in AR projects

Technical Communicators bring these important skills and benefits to an AR project.

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  Knowledge of the user and how he interacts with a product,
  
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  User task analysis,
  
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  User requirements collection,
  
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  Persona development,
  
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  Relationship with design (bridging subject matter expert (SME) and customer needs),
  
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  Information architecture,
  
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  Content re-use,
  
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  Modular content development,
  
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  Content management,
  
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  Usability testing,
  
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  Quality and accuracy testing,
  
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  Minimalism,
  
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  Clear and concise writing,
  
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  Editing, and
  
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  Metadata development
  

In the future, we may also see AR experiences delivered as an automated and continuous service called AR discovery. The generic concept of information discovery originated in the geospatial data community that needed advanced software and interfaces to mine the large data sets that sensing systems (such as environmental monitoring stations) generate. According to Christine Perey, the chair of the AR Community for Open and Interoperable Augmented Reality and a member of the AR Discovery task force, “the user of a system designed to deliver AR discovery receives the real time results of continuous contextually-driven search of AR experience directories. Based on the result of the contextual search, the AR experiences from many diverse sources are uniquely filtered for the user and can then be presented, at the user’s discretion, in an Augmented Reality view”.

Discovery of Augmented Reality experiences will result from new software intelligence that is built into network-based identity and data management systems and mobile user agents connected to sensors and continually monitoring the user’s context. Digital assets encoded with triggers matching any stimuli in the user’s environment will be delivered (though their presentation will depend on other factors, usually in the user’s settings). These digital assets will be made up of descriptive or instructional context sensitive content. The content will need to be assigned metadata and will need to be managed. Technical Communicators and Information Architects already know how to do this. They are experts at organizing granular pieces of information, reusing it, cataloging it, and managing it. This Herculean effort will require a Technical Communicator’s experience and expertise when the time comes.

Introducing the OASIS Augmented Reality in Information Products Technical Committee

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  Glossary Sub-Team – consolidating industry terms into a useful AR glossary for technical communicators
  
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  Research Sub-Team – investigating industry practices, tools and standards to create best practice guidelines for technical communicators
  
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  Outreach Sub-Team – evangelizing best practices and other TC work through conference presentations, articles and other forums.
  

As AR has such varied potential applications, our members include representatives from various industries, including: Geospatial, Healthcare, Aircraft Manufacturing, Enterprise Software, and Services.

The ARIP TC is formally organized under OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. OASIS is a nonprofit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.

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