I’ve split my career evenly between instructional design and technical writing, and I’ve always believed that my technical writing experience has benefited my instructional design and that my instructional design experience has benefited my technical writing. I consider everything I write a learning deliverable. Tom Johnson’s recent article titled The Blame Game of RTFM describes (among other things) the need for technical writers to consider learning models when designing and creating technical content. If more writers consider the impact of cognitive load on their readers, I believe their deliverables would be more appealing and useful.
