Analysis and Visualization of Information Quality of Technical Documentation

Technical documentation has moved from printed booklets to online versions that need to be updated continuously to match product development and user demands. There is an imminent need to ensure the quality of technical documentation, i.e. information that follows a product. Moving from printed material to online versions also allows for documentation to become active, to integrate interactive content, which blurs the boundaries between information and software. In order to assess quality of technical documentation, we adopt analyses and visualizations known from quality assessment of software. The analyses assess text copies, usage, structural properties, and the conformance of information to meta-information. The analysis results are visualized using a range of abstractions to aid in identifying and communicating quality issues to different stakeholders. In a case study, we assessed the quality of real world technical documentations from a Swedish mobile phone vendor, a Japanese camera vendor, and a Swedish warship producer. The study showed that our analyses and visualization are applicable and can identify quality issues. For example, we tested an unclassified subset of the warship’s technical documentation and found that 49% of it was redundant information. The case study was conducted at a Swedish company that is in charge of creating and maintaining technical documentation. While our approach is limited to analysis that can be performed automatically, the company acknowledges that it has great potential and that our results proved helpful.