In researching "Trends in Online Help" I found "Trends in Technical Communication" (Brandon, Magnuson, Hoeppner, Melsted, a 2000 STC Conference Proceeding presentation)
The authors claim that "the best products are created and developed when the user is involved in the project."
Perhaps technical writers should compile information from user-authored content to help engineers make products better. This sounds like an entirely different research project than the one I am after. I am researching how technical writers could manage user-authored content. But now I am thinking that user-authored content could be used to make products better.
I found an article that refutes this claim that user participation makes products better.
ReplyDeleteSUBRAMANYAM, RAMANATH, FEILEE WEISSTEIN, and M. S. KRISHNAN. 2010. "User Participation in Software Development Projects." Communications of the ACM 53, no. 3: 137-141. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed October 10, 2010).
"For projects involving the development of new products, increased user participation corresponded with greater developer satisfaction, but decreasing user satisfaction."