20 questions: scoping out a writing assignment’s focus and misconceptions

To fully capture a writing assignment’s focus and value, twenty questions are usually in order. Give or take a few. At the beginning of a gig, I’ll ask all of them. I never know when I’ll run into a misconception or political curse. But after a while, experience with a particular topic teaches me the answers to more and more of these questions.

Overview

1. Topic: What are the keywords?
2. Service or product: What product or service is involved or might be helpful?
3. Timeliness: Why is this article timely at its writing/deadline?
4. Focus: What merits a special focus?
5. Expert Technical Reviewers: Who can serve as a resource for information and to verify the accuracy of the article?
6. Communication: What channels do we want to use to get the word out — mass email, newsletter, Web page, fill-in form, press release, FAQ?

Audience

1. Audience: Which target audiences, customers, or prospects are affected?
2. Assumptions: What does the target audience know? What’s been rumored?
3. History: What related issues have the audience experienced that may color their motivation or response?
4. Misconception: What is most likely to cause the target audience to misunderstand or err?

Action

1. Task: What is the target audience trying to do or accomplish?
2. Trigger: What situation or case triggers a problem?
3. Flow: How is it supposed to work?
4. Solution: What do we want the audience to do? What sequence of steps are recommended in this particular case?
5. Out of Scope: How do you know if you’re not affected? Are there special cases that merit more in-depth attention?

Value

1. Benefits: What are the desired outcomes? What does a successful result look like?
2. Consequences: What are the consequences of errors or inaction?
3. Alternative: If there are alternative solutions, why wouldn’t you want to use them?
4. Validation: What case data, evidence, statistics or resources can be used to confirm the veracity of our information?
5. Illustration: Is there a metaphor, diagram, or image that might attract attention or help understanding?

TIP: With seven really good interview questions, a talkative expert can fill an hour. For the sake of efficiency, I try to get the basic facts out of the way, email my questions ahead of a meeting, and schedule a followup for during draft review to cover the rarer questions.

useful basics on digital images and graphics

As I was helping a third-party company develop their email marketing material, I passed along these very useful basics on digital images and graphics, from my favorite shareware review site, tucows.com:

How to Convert Graphics Images
GIF, JPG, and PNG files are most used for Web, and other file formats are better for print.

Digital Imaging: The Differences in Raster and Vector Images
Fundamentals, with links to well-reviewed software for each type of image. Vector usually includes shapes or text, and don’t take up as much disk space or bandwidth as raster images.

Digital Imaging Part 2: Lossy Vs. Lossless
Shows how compressing a graphic file down to a smaller size can affect quality. As in everything, you have to balance quality with speed. JPG is a lossy format, and may lose detail, but is the defacto standard for emailing photos. GIF usually has the smallest file size, and is best for emails, even if it’s lossy.

Tucows Complete Image Editor shareware selection

vector diagram editing tools compared

Oh, do I love diagrams.

Especially cross-functional diagrams, where you know exactly who does what at what stage in a process, what decisions are made in order to hand it off to another department. I like a vector diagram editor that makes it easy to drag-and-drop decision diamonds with smart arrow connections. And style the shapes with Web 2.0 goodness. (I know. What a geek!)

When I was at Creative Education Institute, I’d use Visio (now owned by Microsoft) to illustrate the stages of learning, practice, and testing with Mathematical Learning Systems. When I was doing network training at SBC (now AT&T), I’d import network diagrams into PowerPoint to layer and animate the pieces. At ECI², I’ve done a host of cross-functional diagrams to communicate standard operating procedures among departments.

Oh, sure, you can get Visio Professional for about $200 now, and Visio Technical for about $300. And you can get SmartDraw for about $200 too. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here’s a biased comparison.

But if your diagramming needs are more modest, Smashing Magazine site has a List of Nifty Tools and Diagrams, which introduced me to the free Gliffy.

A diagram is often worth a thousand words. Gliffy.com is a free web-based diagram editor with some of the same functionality as Visio. You drag-and-drop shapes to create clean yet modern-looking flowcharts, network diagrams, floorplans, user interface designs and other drawings online.You can even upload your own images (logos, icons, specialized shapes etc.) but use the intuitive connection, resizing & rotation tools. You can collaborate via email, or export to:

• SVG for use in Visio, Illustrator, and Freehand
• PNG for use with Fireworks or Photoshop
• JPG for publishing on a Web page or HTML email.

In addition to flow charts and entity-relationship diagrams, Gliffy even does Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams (object, class, node, aggregation, message, dependency, actor, use case). If you want watermark-free, ad-free, private, unlimited diagrams beyond the basic 2MB limit with tech support, it’s available with a Premium account for about $30 a year.