Good Doc is a Hit Record

I came across an article about what makes a hit song today, and it struck me that popular music has a lot of the same characteristics as good documentation, or Edgy Docs. Basically, the article identifies the following characteristics of a hit song:

• Recognizable, listener(user)-friendly structure
• Important/dramatic components are strategically placed
  
• Simple language and melody, memorable
  
• Contains a focused thought that people can identify with
• Presented flawlessly and with distinction
  

The article describes one hit song in the following way:

"The melody and lyrics are distinctively simple and presented faultlessly by [the singer's] amazing and distinct voice. But the song is also universal -- quickly connecting with most listeners."

The author goes on to talk about the difference between expression and communication in music. To summarize: expression is the Avant-Garde Jazz CD that you pretend to like in order to seem interesting. Communication is that boy band song from 5 years ago that you still can't get out of your head. Unfortunately, or fortunately (Justin Timberlake gets more dates than John Zorn), I think documentation is supposed to be most like the boy band song.

Good documentation doesn't want to rock the boat, it doesn't push the boundaries of expression, or create new conventions for communication. It wants to be catchy, to be accessible, and to communicate.

That does not mean that good documentation can't make use of new technologies or new models of communication. In fact, this blog will spend a lot of time talking about bringing new methods and technologies from other fields into the world of documentation - to push documentation over the edge. But, the focus must always be on communication and accessibility.

The Beatles would have written good documentation. Many people consider the Beatles pioneers in music production, and certainly they were commercially successful. But, when you look closer at their music and the music of their time, you see that they weren't the ones who were really pushing the boundaries of musical expression. In fact, their sound was quite conventional compared with the real "expressionists" of the time.

What the Beatles did was borrow the right amount of new technologies, new musical conventions, and new philosophical ideas and mix them with accepted practices. They successfully communicated to a generation and counting (over a billion records sold!) by being accessible and interesting at the same time. Universal, yet distinct.

If your documentation is half as universal and two-thirds as distinct as the Beatles' body of work, you are on your way to documentation greatness. And, if you're looking for a good tech writer, I think Ringo Starr might be available.