The Art of Documentation

One of the first steps in researching and writing about a topic should be to identify the audience and the purpose of your message.

The questions most commonly asked about white papers are “What are they?” and “Why do we need them?”
The broadest definition of a white paper is a persuasive document that usually describes problems and how to solve them.
The term originated in government use, as an offshoot of the term “white book”, which were official documents bound [...]

Users have gotten a bad rap. It’s often assumed by developers that if they do a good job coding a project, then users should just be able to use the software without any assistance. When users fail to use the software (or hardware) as designed, developers throw up their hands and mutter about the stupidity of users.