Emotional personas: writing for the human animal

We know users aren't purely calm, logical beings. They get mad, bored, distracted, anxious, and so on. What does that mean when it comes to writing? It means cultivating empathy and understanding with the thousands of users you'll never see or hear from. A huge task!
That's where emotional personas come in. From Anxious Armadillo to Furious Ferret, each of these five animal-themed personas explores what people go through and how to guide them to a better mental space for processing your material.

Our speaker: Ryan Macklin is an engineer-turned-game designer-turned-tech writer with a focus on empathetic communication. He works at Google in Ann Arbor, with his giant kitty coworker during the pandemic.

Agenda

7:00 - Welcome, grab a snack from your kitchen, introductions
7:15 - Ryan's talk
7:45 - Q & A
8:00 - Discussion
8:15 - Announcements
8:30 - Closing time

Location: Zoom URL to be provided the day of

About Write the Docs

Programmers, technical writers, designers, support professionals, or anyone else interested in best practices in software documentation is welcome!

Write the Docs Detroit is the local Meetup group under a family of Meetups and Conferences called Write the Docs (http://www.writethedocs.org/ ). WTD already exists in over two dozen cities, with a presence both nationally and globally in many emerging tech centers, such as San Francisco, Portland, London, and Berlin.

See the Write the Docs code of conduct: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/

Can't wait till the next meeting to get the conversation started? Check out:

• Write the Docs Slack (make sure you join the #detroit channel): http://www.writethedocs.org/slack/

• Write the Docs forums: http://forum.writethedocs.org/