The 2011 WritersUA Skills and Technologies Survey Skills • Technologies • Platforms • Survey Home The development of user assistance is a blend of a wide variety of skills. Technical communication skills provide the foundation. They are supplemented by skills unique to the software development world. In this survey, we asked the respondents to value the importance of a number of skills commonly employed by user assistance professionals in their daily work. The figure below shows the top ten skills valued highly with a rating of "4" (Very Valuable) or "5" (Invaluable), the top two ratings on a five-point scale. Experience with authoring tools (85%) is at the top of this list. This is a key skill that is valued highly. The nature of working with a digital medium like software user assistance requires the use of a variety of tools. A plumber needs a pipe wrench and we need our authoring tools. Job listings frequently include a variety of tools as prerequisites, so it pays to keep your tool skills current and comprehensive. Content development are highly rated with writing procedures (81%) in second place. As for other aspects of content development, the value of Interviewing (74%) has increased over the past few years. Writing reference information (72%), task analysis (74%), Information architecture (65%), Copy editing (59%), and Developmental editng (54%) are also valued highly by over half of respondents. Project planning is an important skill no matter what your role is. Almost three-quarters (73%) of respondents ranked this highly. Detailed Results Here is the complete list of skills presented in the survey. They are separate into functional groups. The percentages are of responses rating a skill as "Very Valuable" or "Invaluable". Content Development Skills Table Skill Response Percent Writing procedures 81% Interviewing (subject-matter experts/customers/users) 74% Task analysis 74% Writing reference information 72% Information architecture (structured authoring, content management, taxonomies) 65% Copy editing 59% User interface design (embedded UA, field labels, UI Help text) 56% Developmental editing 54% Indexing/Search (tagging, metadata, search engine optimization) 52% Multimedia (images, video, audio) 46% Instructional design 39% Other Skills Table Skill Response Percent Expertise with authoring tools 85% Project planning (without management or supervisory responsibilities) 75% Content reuse (single-sourcing) 63% Quality assurance and testing 56% Usability testing 43% Management and supervision 35% Translation / Localization 33% Code-level Expertise Table Technology Response Percent HTML / CSS 53% XML (DocBook, DITA, DTDs, Schema) 38% Style Sheets / Transformations (XSLT, XSL-FO) 36% DITA 23% JavaScript (or other client-side scripts) 16% Programming (C++, C#, Java, J#, VB, etc.) 14% Server-side scripts (ASP, JSP, PHP, Perl, etc.) 11% Copyright © 2011 WritersUA. All Rights Reserved. shannonm *at* writersua *dot* com	Loading WritersUA offers cutting-edge training and information to Technical Writers, Information Analysts and Architects, Documentation Designers, Help Authors, Publication Managers, Documentation Leads, Senior Writers and Documentation Contractors, and User Education Specialists. The focus is on software user assistance, which encompasses writing, editing, planning, coding, indexing, testing, programming, localization, and standards development.