Featured TC: Kiwibank's Mel Johnston

May 2016

Mel Johnston is an Instructional Designer at Kiwibank, where she is using her 11 years of techcomm experience to develop a course on unsecured lending products. She talks to Tim Grey.

You have a lot of experience working with banks and large public sector organisations. Are there any specific challenges to working with organisations of this size?

I find there are similar constraints regardless of the type or size of client – like technology limitations and people’s time.

It sounds like you have to wear a lot of different hats…

Yes, as well as being an instructional designer, I’m finding I’m also working as a project manager and a business analyst at the moment. It’s actually really common to come into an organisation to do X, but in order to do that you have to do Y and Z as well. And if you’re going to do the job well you have to tackle these issues. But I try and just roll up my sleeves and do whatever needs to be done.

So out of everything you officially (and unofficially) do for your clients, which aspect of the job is the one that gets you most excited?

I really like the detective aspect of it, it’s quite fun. Often as tech writers or instructional designers we help an organisation in many unexpected ways.

In writing down policies and processes you ask questions that people in the organisation don’t know the answer to and I think that process can make the organisation better. For example, they may realise they’ve been living with a huge risk for ages and they need to manage it. It’s often the technical writers who end up uncovering these things and you can end up being a rare thing – someone with a view of the end-to-end process.

You have degrees in law and theatre. It sounds like you had an interesting journey into technical communication.

By the end of university I was leaning heavily towards drama so when I came out I spent about 7 years working in the creative industries, writing for theatre and a little bit for television.

But after a while it became very difficult to sustain. I’ve got a 19 year-old son who I had quite soon after I came out of university, and trying to do the arts thing while being a parent was too hard.

I said to a friend one day that there must be some way I can use all these skills. My friend said why don’t you do what I do? She was working on a big technical writing job for The Sysdoc Group. She introduced me, and within a week I was working for them.

As a parent, you’ve had a lot of success gaining contract work with flexible working hours. Any advice for other part-time tech writers looking to do the same?

Don’t be afraid to state your hours preferences. Many agencies state in the ads what they are ideally looking for, but when it comes down to it they can actually be quite flexible with hours if they really want you.

After 11 years in the business, are there any things in the industry you’d like to see changed?

I’d like there to be more understanding of the work we do and the value we can add. Most people don’t know what technical writers do and even those who do know don’t appreciate the breadth of work we do for an organisation.

I think the value can be hard for some people to appreciate because writing is something most people think they can do. However, the difference between what most people can do and what a tech writer can do can be enormous. A good writer will ask questions, get to the bottom of things that don’t add up or make sense, and point out inefficiencies, inconsistencies, gaps, and risks – not to mention spelling, formatting, and organising documents properly!

I use the analogy that you’d never say to everybody in an organisation “Hey, you can write your own bit of code for this computer system we’re putting in.” - it would never be acceptable to have a devolved approach to writing code. But it seems to be acceptable in writing.