“Even Google Seniors Get Nervous” or How to Write Documentation People Actually Read

“Oh, I get it now!” — a phrase every analyst hopes to hear after someone reads their documentation. In reality, however, it usually ends with a bunch of meetings and follow-up questions.

In this talk, I suggest looking at documentation from an unexpected angle — through the lens of marketing. We will explore the insights behind stakeholder behavior and why people don’t actually read documents. Even if you’ve never worked with marketing concepts before, everything will be easy to follow: complex ideas will be explained through simple, everyday examples — including one pleasant evening drink and music.

Then we’ll see how this perspective can be applied in practice. I will share several documentation design techniques. In fact, after implementing them, I once heard a rather tough team lead say: “Hey, your docs are actually really good!”

I’m confident that after this talk you’ll start hearing that long-awaited phrase more often: “Oh, I get it now!”