What I learned about technical communication
Maintaining a website for the purposes of this course was surprisingly entertaining and less cumbersome than more traditional methods of writing lab reports. Through this experience I've learnt a lot about how to present information through such a unique medium of communication. The biggest difference between building a website versus some word document is the amount of freedom given to the author. I can include pictures, embed videos, change the background, include buttons and animations, etc; there is no limit to the amount of creativity I can pour into making my website stand out. I surprisingly enjoyed the graphic design aspect of building a website and plan to continue to tidy up my website after this course is complete.
At some points however, this freedom was overwhelming and I often found myself awake at late hours struggling with HTML and CSS. I originally started off with a template, but after noticing small bugs that would break my entire website I had to dig up my ancient knowledge of HTML and CSS and dive deep into the code of the website. This was especially frustrating after particularly difficult labs where I wanted nothing more than to submit and forget. But the end result was that I greatly improved my HTML and CSS skills, and I was able to present information in a much more dynamic format than a typical lab report.
At first, I wrote my reports with the target audience of my professor and TAs in mind. My main goal for each lab report was to include into every report as much of the grading rubric as possible in order to maximize my grade in the class. This strategy made my writing slow and robotic, and still didn't manage to salvage my falling GPA. Despite writing so much, there was always something missing in my writing, and the key points would end up lost in a sea of excess detail. I learnt that writing a lot of words doesn't equate to presenting a lot of information, and I gained an increased appreciation for brevity in writing.
Towards the later half of the semester I've made a concious effort to improve the readability of my writing so that I can present my website to any audience, not just my graders. I recognized the importance of my reports being accessible to all audiences, not just those who already have experience with the project. Ideally, my writing should be detailed enough for a reader to replicate the project while simultaneously simple enough for a beginner to follow. Instead of writing like a technical datasheet, which I often find incomprehensible and tiring to read through, my writing should be easy to understand and entertaining to read. To keep my audience I must continuously engage them, and methods to do so include writing in the first person and focusing more on storytelling rather than spewing technical information. I still have a lot to work on, and I hope that my technical communication skills can improve even after this course.