Modern technical documents for global users - usability vs. efficient production

Abstract

Globally used technical documents need to be understood by users who have different cultural and educational backgrounds. Documents should preferably be visual, but such documents are difficult to produce and maintain. In this article visualisations of technical information are categorised according to taxonomy of visual representation elements, which is then evaluated against cultural dependency, language dependency and required professional knowledge. Based on the categorisation, we propose how visual documents with less cultural dependencies can be produced so that they can be reconfigured if the product changes by applying single sourcing methods used in text document production.