Straw Documents-The First Step in Document Tool Making

Next week, my students in technical communication at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth will begin working on their group's iFixit projects. iFixit is based in San Luis Osipio, California, part of Dozuki, a technical documentation software company. iFixit's goal is to help users extend the life of their devices and sell components and tools to people who want to repair their broken electronic devices and tools. Rather than throwing a broken device away, iFixit encourages users to take it apart and repair certain components, which is less expensive, reduces e-waste, and allows users to share with others what they learned and how to fix the same problem, creating a ripple effect of repairing devices rather than throwing them away.

In the past, I encouraged students to complete rough drafts of each of the major documents in their projects-the proposal, the troubleshooting page, the device page, and the repair guides. Recently, I came across another preliminary document planning stage called "Straw Documents." This was written in Team Writing: A Guide to Working in Groups by Joanna Wolfe, of the University of Louisville. In the second chapter, "Project Management," Wolfe advocates creating straw documents which she defines as:

A straw document is basically an extremely rough skeleton of the project that the writer expects to be blown down, like a straw house. The purpose of the straw document is to draw the team into a discussion of the pros and cons of various directions the project might take. In this way, the straw document is a tool to facilitate group brainstorming about specific details.

Joanna Wolfe

A straw document is a great way for students, especially those who are unsure of their writing abilities, to test the waters with their group. They can present an idea with the knowledge that it will be discussed and changed by the group into something more substantial. This encourages risk-taking and creativity among writers, since they can lay down whatever foundations or concepts they want, and then work within their groups and the rhetorical situation (the act of persuading an audience to take positive action against an imperfection in the status quo). Also, as Wolfe noted later in that section, something is accomplished, and group members will not have to wait around for someone to step forward with an idea, which can delay the project severely, affecting their progress and their grades.

In technical communication, having a rough idea first before designing something more substantial helps. Writers can try out all sorts of different concepts and designs for how the information should appear, debate it with their teammates, and then pick a final design to proceed with. Rome wasn't built in a day, and technical documents are not created in one session. They take time, and creating a straw document in the preliminary stage creates a foundation that can be changed and changed again to inspire writers to find the best approach to reach out to their audiences, as my students will find out over the next month as they take apart electronic devices and document them.