Abstract

Minimalism, a user-centered, contextual and action-oriented concept for creating customer documentation, has been one of the major trends in technical communication since the 1990’s. However, many of the texts dealing with minimalism are relatively theoretical and seem to be best suited for creating and assessing the user guidance of consumer software. In recent years, however, many Finnish technical communicators have instead found themselves documenting complicated business products and systems. This trend was also visible in the makeup of the special training programme Minimalism in responsive design (Tverko), which ran in 2017–2018 and was funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. The programme brought together 18 technical communication specialists and five Finnish universities, and it was clear from the beginning of the programme that concrete tools are needed to apply the principles of minimalism in practice. One of the central development areas was linking minimalism to the different stages of the documentation process. In this article, we present a model where minimalism, the documentation process and the best practices in technical communication are combined, keeping the user in the focus throughout.