In this episode, I talk with Bill Holland, a motion graphics designer and video producer, about how tech writers can effectively collaborate with visual creators. We discuss what to include in a creative brief, how to give constructive feedback to designers, setting realistic expectations for animation types and budgets, and how AI is changing but not replacing visual creative work.

—

Bill and I discuss how tech writers and other non-designers can effectively collaborate with visual creators. He walks through what makes a good creative brief, including the importance of assuming the designer knows nothing about your field, spelling out acronyms, clearly identifying what's most important to communicate, and providing mood boards or reference examples for style direction. We use the creation of The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast logo as a real-world example of how the collaboration process works, from initial brief through iteration to a finished product.

We dig into the world of motion graphics and animation, where Bill explains the wide range of animation types and their associated costs, from simple text animation to puppet animation to traditional hand-drawn animation. He stresses the importance of investing in pre-production, including style frames and storyboards, to catch problems early before animation work begins. We also discuss how to give constructive feedback to designers: lead with what's working, be specific about what isn't, and reference your original mood board or brief to articulate where the disconnect is.

We also explore how to evaluate potential designers or animators when hiring, including what to look for in a portfolio and the trade-offs between hiring experienced professionals versus newer talent. The episode wraps up with a discussion of AI's role in visual creation. Bill shares his perspective as someone actively working with AI tools alongside traditional methods, emphasizing that AI works best as part of a hybrid workflow rather than as a wholesale replacement for skilled designers.

About Bill Holland:

Bill Holland (also known by his alias Bill Netherlands) is a motion graphics generalist with an extensive background in video production. With an educational foundation in Art and Design, Bill has worked on every aspect of the motion process from scripting through sound mixing. His early career shooting and editing video informs his storytelling, staging, and pacing in motion graphics today. Bill has created motion graphics and editing work for clients including Google, PBS, NASCAR, the American Dental Association, and Hilton Hotels, earning multiple Telly, Communicator, and Davey awards. He previously ran his own company, Middlebranch Productions, Inc., before rebranding under the Bill Netherlands name at a fellow designer's suggestion.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Bill's motion graphics origin story and his current hybrid AI content creator role
• [00:09:43]: How tech writers often create technical documentation without realizing it
• [00:14:42]: What to include in a creative brief when working with a designer
• [00:21:38]: Handling clients who come in with too much or too little direction
• [00:23:58]: The Not-Boring Tech Writer logo as a real-world collaboration example
• [00:29:29]: Using mood boards and sketching to establish style direction
• [00:32:13]: How to give constructive feedback to designers
• [00:40:22]: Working with motion graphics and animation: types, costs, and setting expectations
• [00:48:33]: The animation production process: style frames, storyboards, and rough animatics
• [00:58:58]: What to look for when hiring a designer or animator
• [01:05:42]: AI's role in animation and visual creation
• [01:12:19]: Using AI as a research and organization tool
• [01:20:10]: Bill's favorite piece of advice

Resources discussed in this episode:

• School of Motion: schoolofmotion.com
• School of Motion Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify
• The Not-Boring Tech Writer logo design iterations
• KnowledgeOwl Linus animation discussed in this episode
• Related episode: Humor and visuals in technical writing with Dennis Dawson (S3:E22)
• Bill Netherlands on Vimeo
• Bill Netherlands on YouTube
• Bill Netherlands on TikTok
• Bill Netherlands on Instagram: Bill Netherlands Motion
• Bill Netherlands on Instagram: Mr. Automatic (DJ)
• Bill’s podcast: Morally Offensive

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Bill Holland:

• Website
• LinkedIn

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I share my latest progress updates as I recover from finishing my big project, along with updates on my daily check-in form. I reflect on some of the key takeaways from Kelton Noyes’ interview (S3:E28) and how my love for process makes my life easier as a tech writer.

—

I’ve been working on catching up on the release tail from finishing my project and getting my docs backlog under control, which has included replacing gifs with short mp4s, creating guidelines for my coworkers to more easily create new pages or update existing pages in the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base, and knocking out a bunch of low-hanging fruit docs tasks.

I’ve also picked up a project I paused in late 2024: updating our API endpoint documentation. I’ve been reworking the documentation to better align with our API’s current reality and requirements and adding some quality of life improvements for myself. I’ve been consistently using the daily check-in form I outlined in episode 27, and I’m largely happy with it, though it hasn’t yet helped me improve my appreciations and high-fives for my teammates.

I also reflect on Kelton’s observations about how documentation should help people to not feel dumb, how getting hands-on with tools during the evaluation process can help refine and reshape your documentation hierarchy of needs, and how his success in transitioning from a support role to a tech writing role was about focusing on selling himself as the person to do documentation, rather than on selling the documentation itself.

I also reflect on one of my key personality traits that I believe makes me more successful as a tech writer: loving the process to do things rather than the product I create. I share anecdotes about LEGO, jigsaw puzzles, and thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Sometimes this strength is also my biggest weakness, so this month I’m focusing on trying to release more even if it feels like the process still wants me to keep working.

In this episode:

• [00:00:58]: My progress updates
• [00:08:32]: Reflecting on Kelton’s episode
• [00:14:35]: LEGO, jigsaw puzzles, and thru-hiking

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl API endpoint documentation
• S3:E24: Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond
• S3:E27: Kate sounds off on self-documentation
• Beating the Virginia Blues: Thru-hiking strategies to help you survive your next big project
• The Wild Reeds' song “Fruition”:
  • On YouTube
  • On Apple Music
  • On Spotify

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I talk with Kelton Noyes, a senior technical communicator who started his career in tech support and gradually built his way into documentation. We discuss how to choose documentation tools, practical strategies for making the business case for investing in documentation, and how Kelton successfully advocated for technical writing as a valuable full-time discipline within his organization.

—

Kelton and I discuss his journey from tech support to technical writing, which began with his frustration at answering the same questions repeatedly. He started creating documentation between support calls to fill gaps he noticed, sharing these resources with coworkers who found them valuable. His managers appreciated the work, but nobody initially recognized documentation as a full-time role. We explore how he eventually made the transition by demonstrating concrete value through metrics like reduced support volume and faster training ramp-up times and shifting the conversation from advocating for the importance of documentation to advocating for himself as the person to do that documentation.

We dive deep into Kelton's approach to choosing documentation tools, including how to develop a hierarchy of needs based on customer feedback, organizational requirements, and author workflow. He shares the importance of taking advantage of demos and free trials to explore features hands-on, explaining how requirements often evolve during this exploration process as you discover capabilities you didn't know you needed.

We also explore red flags that indicate it's time to reevaluate your tooling, the challenge of finding tools that serve multiple departments, and how to navigate the collaborative aspects of getting organizational buy-in for documentation initiatives.

About Kelton Noyes:

Kelton Noyes is an English major with a love of technology who spent years trying to find a way to blend the two. He started his career working technical support jobs across a variety of industries, including web hosting, security, data storage, solar, and shipping. Everywhere he went, he found a lack of documentation. Between support calls, he started creating documentation to fill those gaps. He documented workflows and processes that impacted his job and shared them with coworkers, who widely used and appreciated the resources. His managers and coworkers loved the work he was doing, but nobody at the time saw documentation as a full-time role.

Fast forward several years to a job interview where the hiring manager recognized the company's need for documentation and loved Kelton's background doing exactly that. Kelton started in tech support to learn the product and began building documentation in his second week. Six years and two promotions later, he's never been happier professionally than he is building documentation full time.

When he's not documenting, Kelton enjoys cooking, board games, reading, debating, general handy work, gardening, and playing music.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Kelton's origin story: From English degree to tech support to technical writing
• [00:02:46]: Current role as senior technical communicator in fintech
• [00:05:04]: Why "technical communicator" instead of "technical writer"
• [00:07:28]: Identifying documentation needs from support patterns and customer feedback
• [00:10:34]: Developing a hierarchy of needs for tool features
• [00:14:13]: Considering author workflow and collaboration in tool selection
• [00:19:28]: Using interactive glossary features to reduce support time
• [00:26:39]: Demonstrating documentation value with metrics
• [00:30:11]: Finding tools that serve multiple departments without overpromising
• [00:35:51]: The importance of demos and free trials in tool evaluation
• [00:41:49]: Making the case for transitioning from support to full-time writer
• [00:43:33]: Using documentation to reduce training time from three weeks to two weeks
• [00:54:11]: Building a culture where documentation is valued
• [01:05:42]: Evolving tooling and documentation standards company-wide
• [01:09:03]: Red flags that indicate it's time to reevaluate tooling
• [01:12:17]: Resource recommendation: Sapling's passive voice tools
• [01:14:32]: Advice: Learn to advocate for yourself and your ideas

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Sapling Passive Voice Checker
• Sapling Passive to Active Sentence Rewriter

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kelton Noyes:

• LinkedIn

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress (spoiler: I finished my project! 🎉). I also share the new daily check-in Google Form I’m trying, inspired by Kate Pond’s interview (S3:E24), as well as some general thoughts on the power of self-documentation and a call for more intermittent or unofficial tech writing guests.

—

I finally finished my project to update the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base to align with major navigation and UI changes we rolled out in December 2024! 🎉 I updated and archived a ton of articles, completed a tags audit, overhauled our internal guidance on using tags, and submitted a pull request to the Microsoft Entra docs to update their KnowledgeOwl SSO docs. Along the way, I had to trim my scope and toss a lot of additional ideas or changes into a separate backlog list. Now that I’ve completed the project, I’m hoping to work through that separate backlog list as time permits.

I used Kate Pond’s blog post about her daily check-ins as a strawman to create my own daily check-in Google Form for my work and I share the questions I’m using. I’ll report back on my usage of it in my next solo episode.

I also share a previously unreleased clip from Kate Pond’s interview in which I describe a form of self-documentation I’ve used in my personal life to manage a chronic illness, many of the benefits to using self-documentation in this way, and some tips for trying it out yourself. I reflect on Kate Pond’s career journey and share what I see as some of the key steps in that journey that others might be able to replicate.

I close the episode by noting that I’m really trying to include more unofficial or intermittent tech writers like Kate Pond, so if you or someone you know has written documentation without calling yourself a tech writer, please come on the show! Feel free to use our guest suggestions form.

In this episode:

• [00:00:00]: Project completion and reflection
• [00:03:35]: Crafting my new daily check-in
• [00:11:23]: My Long Covid self-documentation journey
• [00:15:43]: Benefits of self-documentation
• [00:20:44]: Strategies for career transitions
• [00:23:42]: Welcoming more intermittent tech writers

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base
• Google Forms for Self-Evaluation
• S3:E24: Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I share clips from my conversations with Liz Argall, Dennis Dawson, Sarah Walker, Ryan Macklin, Nick Graziade, Janine Chan, and Kate Pond. The clips include outtakes, sound check moments, and segments we cut for time from our 2025 interviews.

—

This episode is different from our usual format. Instead of a single guest interview, I'm sharing clips that we cut from this year's episodes or captured during our pre-recording sound checks. Most of these clips didn't make it into the final episodes due to time constraints, but they contain insights and moments I didn't want to lose entirely. The clips range from lighthearted sound check banter to substantive discussions that didn't fit the final edit.

Sarah Walker and I dig deeper into the concept of "beginner's mind" and how returning to documentation you haven't touched in a while can be both humbling and instructive. Ryan Macklin extends empathy advocacy to include ourselves and reminds us that understanding where frustrated customers are coming from doesn't mean we have to accept abusive behavior. Nick Graziade and I explore the limitations of hierarchy as the sole approach to information architecture and why metadata-driven organization can sometimes serve users better than deep folder structures. And Kate Pond and I briefly discuss weekly check-ins and the idea of gamifying daily reflection. There are also some fun moments from sound checks with Liz Argall and Dennis Dawson, plus a clip from Janine Chan's episode that I couldn't resist revisiting.

Consider this a peek behind the curtain at how the podcast comes together as well as a thank you to all of our 2025 guests for being so generous with their time and insights!

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

In this episode:

• [00:00:04]: Kate Mueller’s intro
• [00:05:04]: Liz Argall
• [00:07:05]: Dennis Dawson
• [00:09:46]: Sarah Walker
• [00:18:11]: Ryan Macklin
• [00:21:17]: Nick Graziade
• [00:30:24]: Janine Chan
• [00:31:44]: Kate Pond
• [00:33:50]: Kate Mueller’s outro

Original Season 3 episodes featuring these guests:

• Episode 4: Bridging the gap from "not technical enough" to "technical" with Janine Chan
• Episode 12: Documentation as a creative endeavor with Nick Graziade
• Episode 13: Connecting permaculture and documentation with Liz Argall
• Episode 16: Empathy advocacy: Designing docs for all emotional states with Ryan Macklin
• Episode 18: Yoga wisdom for technical writers with Sarah Walker
• Episode 22: Humor and visuals in technical writing with Dennis Dawson
• Episode 24: Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond

Guest bios:

Liz Argall:

Liz Argall creates empowering documentation and processes; where you need it, when you need it.

She’s a technical writer, program manager, author, and trainer who delivers humanizing, data informed, accessible, and technically complex projects for a range of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to a community development organization in Uganda.

In a past life, she was a professional artist talent scout and she’s still a professional member of SFWA (now called the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association). She’s a graduate of Clarion Writers Workshop, has been critiqued by multiple New York Times best selling authors, and has critiqued the stories of multiple award winning authors, which is a long way of saying that she likes to give a good portfolio critique!

Dennis Dawson:

Like many baby-boomers, Dennis still hasn't decided what he wants to be when he grows up. He's a technical writer with 40 years' experience in technical communications providing documentation, training, and user support; a sketchnotes artist for Write the Docs; a 3-time Distinguished Toastmaster and Past District 57 Governor who's won District Champion titles in Humorous, Tall Tales, and Evaluation contests; a volunteer Santa Claus at San Jose Christmas in the Park; and a volunteer drawing teacher at local elementary schools.

Sarah Walker:

Sarah's been writing and crafting stories since she was able to put pencil to a Peanuts 3x5 top-spiral memo pad and record her stories in her own scribbly alphabet. Since personal alphabets scribbled on tiny pieces of paper don't pay the rent, she embarked on her career as a professional writer and editor after graduating from St. Edward's University (Austin, TX) in 1998. As an industry editor with Hoover's for roughly seven years, she covered biotech, pharmaceuticals, health care systems, venture capital, investment firms, and other sectors as a member of the Finance and Health Care editorial team. She earned her Austinite bone fides by getting hired by and, 18 months later, laid off by Dell, where she served as a technical editor for the Global Technical Training and Curriculum Team for products and software for consumers as well as small and midsize businesses. Thanks to the Great Recession and other market forces and personal demands, she bounced around a bit from writing and editing features, self-help book summaries, U.S. Pharmacopeia monographs, and other technical-ish content.

She began her technical writing career in earnest at Libre Digital, where she spent much of the second decade of the 21st century documenting procedures for processing various magazine titles as well as a platform for book publishers to distribute their titles to digital marketplaces. After a two-year stint as the managing editor (and lone full-time, non-contract employee) of a local bimonthly magazine targeting affluent residents of "West Austin," at long last (in August 2020), Sarah landed a job that gave her the Technical Writer job title, and she's been writing about the Monetate platform ever since.

Sarah's second career as a yoga instructor (and briefly a Pilates mat instructor) began in 2005, after she completed her 250-hour instructor training with Yoga Yoga (now defunct, just like the college in Santa Fe, NM that she attended for the first two years of her undergrad studies). She taught part-time until 2012, when primary job demands and other responsibilities forced her to give it up.

Ryan Mackl...

In this solo episode, I share my latest content update progress. I also reflect on all of 2025 hosting this podcast, offering lessons learned about tech writing and myself alongside gratitude to this year’s awesome guests and listeners like you.

—

I’ve continued my work to update the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base to align with major navigation and UI changes we rolled out in December 2024. I’ve finished my official punchdown list and am working through some spot checks and searches to verify I didn’t overlook anything in that list.

This episode is my final solo episode of 2025, so it felt appropriate to reflect a bit on how this year has gone. I share seven lessons about tech writers and tech writing I’ve distilled from the year:

1. Tech writers are really really really not-boring humans.
2. We like to learn stuff and we’re more or less always learning.
3. We’re always adapting.
4. We know a lot of random stuff and it’s not always limited to technical domains.
5. We’re generous with our knowledge.
6. Very few of us came into this profession in a linear or “traditional” way.
7. Care and empathy underlie a lot of what we do.

I also share some lessons I learned about myself and offer a ton of gratitude, most especially to the awesome roster of amazing, talented people who graced me with interviews this year, and also to all the folks behind the scenes who make this possible. We are, slowly but surely, building a solid not-boring community, and I look forward to another year of doing the same!

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base
• S3:E23: Kate sounds off on small things and repairs

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I talk with Kate Pond, a software engineer and former park ranger who turned self-documentation into a career superpower. We discuss her practical system of using Google Forms to track daily work and accomplishments, how this helps with performance reviews and job interviews, and why documenting your own work is essential for professional growth.

—

Kate Pond and I discuss her unique path from park ranger to software engineer and how documentation played a crucial role throughout her career transitions. She shares how creating personal runbooks as a college RA taught her that writing things down once saves countless hours of reinventing the wheel later. We explore how this philosophy extended into her transition to software engineering, where she documented everything she learned at technical meetups.

The heart of our conversation centers on Kate's Google Forms system for self-documentation, which she created to track her daily work, accomplishments, and professional development. She explains how the system uses a mix of checkbox ratings (like "how do you feel right now?" on a 1-10 scale) and free-form text fields to capture what she worked on, who she collaborated with, what she learned, and what she's proud of. We discuss how this creates both quantitative data you can graph over time and qualitative records you can mine for performance reviews, peer feedback, and interview preparation.

We also explore the broader philosophy behind self-documentation, including how it helps combat the reality that we simply can't remember everything we do, the value of having "retro docs" when taking breaks from projects, and how documentation for yourself follows the same principles as documentation for users. Near the end of our conversation, Kate shares practical advice from her career coach about doing "scary hour" sessions with a friend to tackle procrastinated tasks.

About Kate Pond:

Kate Pond is a Seattle-based software engineer, technical storyteller, and former park ranger. With a background in both environmental education and backend engineering, she brings a systems-thinking approach to everything from documentation to distributed systems.

Through her studio, The Pond’s Edge, Kate is building climate-tech and AI-powered tools that support sustainability and reduce waste—most recently focusing on circular economy solutions rooted in local community needs.

Kate is passionate about making complex ideas accessible and mentoring others to grow as thoughtful technologists. She’s spoken at GopherCon, REdeploy, and SeaGL, and actively contributes to the PNW tech and climate communities through events like CascadiaJS and PNW Climate Week.

Recommendation from Kate Pond:

9Zero Climate Innovation Hub is a coworking space and community designed for climate innovators—founders, engineers, scientists, creatives, and changemakers. With locations in San Francisco and Seattle, and expanding to NYC and Los Angeles, it’s a vibrant hub for events, collaboration, and climate-focused work.

If you’re based in or near one of those cities and looking for a supportive, mission-driven space to work or connect, definitely check them out.

✨ Referral perk: If you sign up for a membership and mention my name (“Kate Pond”) as your referrer, we both get a free month (or up to $150 off). Win-win!

Learn more at 9zero.com

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Kate Pond - DEV Community
• Kate Pond – Medium
• Google Forms for Self-Evaluation
• Talks from Write the Docs Portland 2025

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Pond:

• Website: thepondsedge.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I talk about my latest content update progress. I also reflect on Dennis Dawson’s interview (S3:E22), the ways I'm already using Dennis's tips, and the power of doing small things or repairs to affect larger change.

—

I’ve continued my work to update the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base to align with major navigation and UI changes we rolled out in December 2024. My previous punchdown list of fewer than 50 articles was wrong, but I do think I’m below 100 now, after I found a chunk of content I’d completely missed.

I reflect a bit on some of the detailed, specific next steps Dennis Dawson offered. Thanks to some of his points, I won’t be including a floating copy of my head in upcoming videos. I’m also starting to think of visual ways I can help give my readers a pause during conceptually-heavy content, to let them shift from focused mind to diffuse mind.

I also reflect on the piece of advice that most stuck out to me from Dennis’s interview: “Get over yourself. Get over your reticence”, and a new practice I have of picking up trash along the main road near my house. Along the way, I tie in quotes from Abby Covert, Ari Weinzweig, and Harrison Gardner.

So much of tech writing boils down to what we might classify as “small things” (Weinzweig) or “repairs” (Gardner). In both cases, these small actions can add up to big change and momentum over time. They’re also one of the ways we can most express care and commitment to a project. This month, I’m doubling down on these small things and repairs, and I invite you to join me in finding small ways to care for your documentation.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base
• Abby Covert’s How To Make Sense of Any Mess, excerpted from chapter 7: Be the filter, not the grounds
• Ari Weinzweig’s Small Actions Matter in Much Bigger Ways Than We Might Imagine: Pint-sized ideas, the struggle of self-doubt, and learning to take action anyway
• Harrison Gardner:
  • Subscribe to his newsletter on his website
  • Build Your Own: Use what you have to create what you need
  • Common Knowledge

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I talk with Dennis Dawson, a technical writer with 40 years of experience who creates the sketchnotes for Write the Docs talks. We talk about how humor and visual elements can make documentation more engaging and memorable, the science behind why graphics help information stick in long-term memory, practical tools and techniques for adding visual content to your docs, and why you don't need to consider yourself an artist to create effective illustrations that enhance your documentation.

—

Dennis and I discuss his unconventional path into technical writing, starting with an English degree and progressing through roles as an editor, typist, secretary, and eventually desktop support in the early days of personal computing. His technical writing career began at startups in the 1980s, where he combined training and documentation work. Throughout his 40-year career, Dennis has consistently advocated for using humor and visual elements in documentation.

Our conversation centers on the science behind why visual content and humor make documentation more effective. Dennis shares how reading Richard Mayer's Multimedia Learning and Barbara Oakley's books on learning validated many of his instinctive approaches. We explore concepts like how visual information sticks in long-term memory more easily than text, the importance of reducing cognitive load through strategic use of graphics, and how breaking up text with visuals gives readers' brains time to process information by switching between focused and diffuse modes of thinking. Dennis also discusses when to use graphics and shares examples like using whimsical robot characters to represent different software components.

We dive into the practical side of creating visual content, including Dennis's collaborative approach of sketching ideas and working with design teams to polish them into professional graphics, and tools like Gimp, Inkscape, Keynote, and Google Slides that make visual creation accessible. Dennis emphasizes that you don't need to consider yourself an artist to create effective illustrations—the key is getting over your reticence and recognizing that drawing is a skill developed through practice, not innate talent. We also discuss his approach to creating educational videos, including using Doc Detective to automate video updates when UIs change. Throughout our conversation, Dennis stresses the importance of using visual humor and plain language to help make documentation digestible and accessible.

About Dennis Dawson:

Like many baby-boomers, Dennis still hasn't decided what he wants to be when he grows up. He's a technical writer with 40 years' experience in technical communications providing documentation, training, and user support; a sketchnotes artist for Write the Docs; a 3-time Distinguished Toastmaster and Past District 57 Governor who's won District Champion titles in Humorous, Tall Tales, and Evaluation contests; a volunteer Santa Claus at San Jose Christmas in the Park; and a volunteer drawing teacher at local elementary schools.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Free tools:
  • Doc Detective: Manny Silva’s open source tool for testing and validating documentation
    • Doc Detective tutorials that Dennis created
    • As a reminder, we also did an episode with Manny Silva on Doc Detective S3:E14
  • GIMP: free alternative to Adobe Photoshop
  • Inkscape: free alternative to Adobe Illustrator
• Books:
  • Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer
  • Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley, Terrence Sejnowski, Alistair McConville
  • A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
  • Uncommon Sense Teaching by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, Terrence J. Sejnowski
• Dennis Dawson’s sketchnotes:
  • Write the Docs Portland, May 2025
  • Write the Docs Atlantic, September 2024
  • Write the Docs Portland, April 2024
  • Write the Docs Atlantic, September 2023
• Write the Docs Portland 2023 talks:
  • Lightning Talk: Dennis Dawson - Sketchnoting: Engaging both brains
  • Caitlin Davey - The visuals your users never saw…wait that’s most of them
  • Ryan Young - Is it (layer) cake: Thinking in content levels

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Dennis Dawson:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: dennissdawson.wixsite.com/mr--dawson
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I share an update on my content update progress. I also reflect on Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti’s interview (S3:E20) and the ways exploring models like his Seven-Action Documentation model have helped me interrogate my own beliefs about tech writing, the benefits of self-knowledge in becoming a better writer, and the ways that maintenance docs work helps me recharge.

—

I’ve continued my work to update the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base to align with major navigation and UI changes that we rolled out in December, and I’m finally nearing the light at the end of the tunnel: my initial punchdown list has less than 50 articles remaining! Along the way, I’ve also had to re-update docs I already updated as we rolled out more changes to existing features–ahhh, the life of a tech writer.

In his interview, Fabri mentioned that part of his motivation for creating the Seven-Action Documentation model was a frustration that people were taking frameworks like Diátaxis and just rote-applying them to their documentation. We discovered some very deep common ground: that models and frameworks are useful because they help you, as a writer, surface and interrogate the deeply-held beliefs you have about technical writing. They’re tools for exploration rather than step-by-step guides on what to do. In my case, engaging with the Seven-Action Documentation model helped me realize how strongly I felt about appraisal and troubleshooting as user needs. While I’m not necessarily crafting new content templates to handle this, my site structure has naturally incorporated them, and I’m now exploring the idea of review checklists or user journeys that might help me assure that I’m handling all the user needs in some way.

I’ve also been sick with Covid, which slowed down my velocity for more strategic, creative work and prompted me to return to a lot of maintenance work. Fabri mentioned that maintenance work helps him recharge, and I found the same thing. I often call maintenance work “productive procrastination”, since it’s not usually the single most important thing, but it is something I can do when my energy or focus are low so that I’m still improving my docs every day. Consider this your invitation to spend the next month paying attention to which writing tasks fill or drain your cup, what kinds of energy those tasks demand, and how you can better manage that moving forward.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn