Types of information
Information comes in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the text on the back of a lottery ticket to the mountain of maintenance manuals needed for a jumbo jet. Here are some common business documents:
- product brochures
- product guides
- proposals
- reports
- policies and procedures
- specifications
- articles for trade press
- notes for training courses
- presentations
Whether on paper or screen, these documents share the same goal: to communicate information accurately and efficiently. When they succeed, readers obtain the knowledge they need without struggling and wasting time.
How can I help you improve your documents? By taking the appropriate information from the experts and presenting it so that it can be easily understood by the readers, who are usually not experts. Information design explains how I do this.
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Benefits of successful information
Successful documents contribute to:
- product sales. Successful supporting documents create a good impression and helps sales staff to promote a product.
- product satisfaction. Customers expect a product's supporting documents to be helpful and reliable. When this happens, customers are satisfied with both the product and the supplier.
- product support. Poor documents mean your company has to provide more support staff or accept less productivity from staff who put aside other work when support is needed. Besides, telephone support is not a realistic alternative to effective documents because it cannot normally help your customers outside office hours.
- overseas markets. For a translated document to be successful, it's essential that the original English document is well written and unambiguous. It's particularly important that the original document uses its terminology consistently. When a translation is not available, effective English documents will be appreciated by readers whose first language is not English.
- management. If reports are accurate and easy to understand, they provide firm foundations for making decisions.
- work efficiency. Successful procedures and specifications ensure work is done correctly and consistently. It's said that this is the knowledge age — if an organisation records its knowledge, it will retain its knowledge.
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Summary of services
I can provide the following services:
- design and write documents
- edit documents
- prepare paper and screen documents
- advise people how to improve their documents
- prepare and present bespoke training courses
For descriptions of some of my projects, see Projects.
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