Field research methodology

This page outlines how I approach all my field research.

Computer professionals docs sites

I’m paid to write docs for computer professionals, mostly software engineers. My research is heavily biased towards docs sites for these people. The docs sites for people in other domains are under different constraints. I.e. if you’re not also writing docs for computer professionals, then my research might not be relevant for you. Over time I may try to sample docs sites from other domains precisely because they might approach similar problems differently.

Docs site “types”

Within the niche of “docs sites for computer professionals” I aim to get a wide range of samples from different “types” of docs sites. The documentation needs for code libraries, frameworks, programming languages, etc. are all quite different from one another. Maybe they therefore solve the same UI/UX problems in different ways?

Popular sites

I lean towards studying docs sites for products that I know to be popular. The rationale is that these sites essentially condition us around what’s normal and not normal for a docs site.

Left-to-right text design bias

I don’t work on heavily internationalized docs sites and therefore I write with left-to-right text biases such as “the logo is usually in the top-left corner”.